IAB urges advertisers to be more creative on mobile

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has urged advertisers to be more creative in their approach to mobile advertising and shed the “one size fits all” approach.

The IAB says that mobile should now be considered as a separated medium rather than an add on to digital and predicts that marketing and advertising spend on mobile devices will be worth £1bn in the UK by 2015, reaching £4.3bn (€5bn) in Western Europe.

The trade body says that agencies should keep mobile ad campaigns simple, but use creativity to “amplify the user experience” in ways that online advertising cannot.

It also adds that agencies should capitalise on smartphone features such as cameras, GPS and multi-touch abilities, to make mobile ad campaigns “do something” rather than just “say something” like traditional advertising.

Amit Kotecha networks and mobile manager at the IAB told Pitch that while developing strong creative is improving, and budgets are increasing, agencies are still struggling to understand how to manage campaigns on the nascent channel.

“The more budget agencies have the more creative they can be. There’s definitely a greater opportunity to build branding on mobile, but the industry’s lacking case studies so creativity will come with experience.”

“The more mobile campaigns executed, then the more data there is to collate and from that agencies can learn what works,” he says.

The observations are part of a report it has published to help agencies “get under the skin of mobile” and deliver more integrated and creative mobile strategies for brand clients.