"Because marketers with large companies anticipate including major search engines as part of their branding campaigns, they realize this tactic could result in additional expenses and are planning accordingly," said Kevin Heisler, JupiterResearch analyst and lead author of the report. "But the additional cost is just one of the challenges faced by marketers today."
In addition to keyword inflation, complex campaign management and methods of tracking the success of search engine marketing activity continue to elude marketers. More collaboration among company CEO's, CMO's, and CTO's could change that, the report states.
"New media has changed the focus of marketing strategies used by companies of all sizes. Accountability is crucial, but understanding these tactics shouldn't fall solely to Chief Marketing Officers," said David Schatsky, president of JupiterResearch. "Other key players such as Chief Technology Officers and brand managers should also be involved in the search evaluation process."
The world market for mobile marketing and advertising is expected to be worth about $3 billion by the end of 2007, according to a recent study from ABI Research. By 2011, the value of this market will reach $19 billion, including mobile search and video advertising. ABI Research also expects some of the highest levels of spending to come in the broadcast mobile video space. By 2011, it will surpass SMS as a source of mobile marketing spending, due in part to mobile broadcast networks' presence in all major markets. In 2011, ABI Research expects spending for broadcast mobile video advertising alone to reach $9 billion.
But for this market to reach its full potential, carriers, advertisers and marketing companies must utilize multiple technologies and business models to bring their messages to mobile consumers. "Mobile advertising and marketing is a risky, albeit enticing business," says ABI Research principal analyst Judith Rosall.
"Unlike the PC, a mobile device offers a uniquely personalized communications channel. Carriers worldwide have quite a bit of information about their end-users: name, sex, age, geographical location. And depending on the handset and plan their users have purchased, the carriers probably also know something about their economic status and credit record. But they don't like to release this information to third parties because they want to protect and control their customers."
Mobile marketing and advertising is also at varying levels of maturity, depending on the market or country, says Rosall. In Europe and Asia, mobile marketing is fairly well developed. However, early-adopting brands in the US are still in the process of testing the water. They don't typically allocate a set percentage of their annual budgets to mobile. In turn, major ad agencies are still relatively inexperienced with mobile marketing campaigns, and reluctant to utilize location-based services and technologies such as MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and mobile search that are still in the early stages of deployment. Their slow pace in exploiting opportunities in mobile marketing and advertising, however, has opened the door for a number of specialized agencies, aggregators, and other enablers.
