Vdopia, a leader in rich media advertising, recently released a new study revealing that 77% of telecommunications companies’ mobile ad budgets are devoted to video and rich media.
The new report reflects the changing advertising landscape. Mobile ads represent a far bigger part of the marketing puzzle nowadays than they used to. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are just a few of the big names who are already reaping the shift’s benefits.
“With video consumption on the rise, telecom marketers are leveraging video ads to reach smartphone audiences in an engaging and intuitive manner,” says Vdopia CEO Saurabh Bhatia. “With larger and better smartphones and user access to faster mobile broadband, comes a great opportunity for marketers to leverage videos for conveying the right marketing message.”
The trend towards heavier spending on mobile ads should come as no surprise. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and a 2014 Pew Internet Research Group study, there are about 140,633,076 adult smartphone users in the United States. About half of these people use their devices as their primary Internet source, which means that mobile ads would most heavily affect about 70,316,538 adults.
Savvy marketing professionals are also riding the mobile ad wave. Just this month, Sprint’s top digital marketer of 15 years, Scott Zalaznik, has left the telecommunications company for mobile ad-tech firm xAd, which sells marketers location data for mobile-ad serving.
The report also found some interesting details about what telecom companies use mobile ads to advertise. According to the study, 35% of mobile ads pitch data plans, 29% advertise discounts and/or offers, and 27% advertise product promotions.
Yet few companies cared about increasing brand awareness. The study found that improving brand recognition was the chief goal of a mere 9% of campaigns running ads with Vdopia.