Mobile advertising gathering steam this festive season

Mobile advertising is steadily gathering steam this festive season and is expected to touch Rs.430 crore ($70 million) in 2014. Experts feel that in the coming days mobile advertising will play an important role in driving growth in the digital advertising space.

"With digital advertisement pushing its way through, mobile advertisement will play a pivotal role in driving growth in this space in the coming days. Especially during festive seasons like Diwali and other festivals it plays a crucial role in driving mass media online," Pankaj Sethi, a consultant for digital and telecom services, told IANS.

Affordable smartphones and tablets in India are driving the mobile advertising space and it is expected to grow 43 percent in 2014, according to the mobile advertising spend report by Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) in partnership with media platform exchange4media . The small and medium businesses are also leveraging mobility solutions for their promotions.

Mobile advertising

accounts for 10-15 percent of the digital advertisement space. It is the fastest growing among all the verticals in the digital advertising space, given the fact that India is the worlds' fastest growing smartphone market, with the base expected to double this year, from 156 million to 364 million.

According to a report by Opera, mobile advertising volume in India has grown the fastest in the world since July 2013 by 260 percent and is also the fastest growing region in Asia-Pacific with 70 percent year-on-year growth.

Apart from growth in the smartphone sector, Sethi attributed this growth to multiplication in apps businesses by various companies and services.

"With our innovative products m-AdCall, m-Ad AppTouch we are offering our partners new opportunities for deeper and continued engagement with customers, through interactive videos, landing pages and even tailored brand rewards this festive season. Now, the customer has a choice of watching an ad and gets rewarded too - the powerful model of m-Ad call services, where customers choose which interactive ads to see and when they want to see them," Jay Jain, director & co-founder, M-AdCall, told IANS.

M-AdCall is a mobile advertising player in India.

"Mobile advertising has become a popular advertising medium this festive season. Mobile advertising blitz is on, with brands spending thousands of crores of rupees on high-intensity publicity campaigns from September- October 2014," a Counterpoint Technology Market Research report said.

(Aparajita Gupta can be contacted at aparajita.g@ians.in)