Mobile Marketing's Rapid Growth

What's the Value of Mobile Ads to Your Organization?

A recent study by the Mobile Marketing Association finds the field is experiencing rapid growth in both investment and employment—something associations could certainly benefit from. But beyond promoting the industry, the study has a secondary motive: Warding off regulation. That’s the stance that the Mobile Marketing Association, a trade group focused on supporting the budding industry in a number of ways. But while the MMA Mobile Marketing Economic Impact Study shows a huge amount of potential for the industry’s growth, the secondary goal of the study might prove equally interesting to associations.

More key points from the study below:

How big could the industry get? The MMA study suggests that the industry could nearly triple in size from a job-creation level, from 524,000  jobs in 2012 to 1.4 million in 2015. It also predicts the industry will explode financially, jumping from $6.7 billion in investments in 2012 to a projected $19.8 billion by 2015. The marketing reach could be even wider—the association estimates that the impact of mobile marketing could surge from $139 billion in 2012 to more than $400 billion in 2015. And things don’t appear to be slowing, according to one the study’s researchers. “Historically, spending in all other mediums eventually flattens out and declines. We don’t see that curve in the data that we have,” said Columbia University marketing professor Joe Plummer, who spoke to AdAge.

The potential for social impact: One thing the study emphasizes is the role that such products could play in improving day-to-day routines. Mobile devices could, for example, help consumers save gasoline by helping them find a parking spot much more easily, or help prevent adverse effects from medicine by offering consumers more information on prescription drugs. For associations, clearly this stretches in many ways.

How much should you spend? With the industry growing at a quick rate, the association recommends that, on average, marketers should spend 7 percent of their marketing budgets on mobile products or advertising—a finding based on a 2012 study of the return on investment of mobile marketing. “Increasing mobile investment to the levels recommended will produce better business results for the same budget, the association asserts.

Read the entire article by Ernie Smith for Associations Now here.