‘Only 16% of marketers have mobile strategy’

The CMO Council’s latest mobile advertising report reveals that mobile relationship marketing (MRM) was “the single most investigated, tested and piloted” marketing activity of 2012.

However, concerns over the ability to measure the effectiveness of mobile marketing activity has raised doubts over its ROI according to the poll of over 550 senior brand marketers.

The CMO Council, whose 6,000-strong membership controsl $300bn in annual spend, also highlights research stating that only 16 per cent of client-side marketers have a mobile marketing strategy in place.

However, of those that do, only 14 per cent are satisfied with its results.

Meanwhile, the majority of marketers (77 percent) report a key impediment to investing more on mobile is the lack of case studies demonstrating best practice available to them.

Other problems include the ongoing fragmentation within mobile media, such as devices using different operating systems like Android and iOS, as well as the lack of a common technology platform for mobile analytics.

The findings of the CMO Council study tally with an IAB study launched earlier this week indicating a “lack of understanding” on mobile, among both brands and agencies, was still the largest hurdle to bigger mobile advertising budgets.

To address the problems with measuring the effectiveness of mobile, both Comscore and Nielsen are attempting to measure the value of mobile ads and contextualise its consumption within the wider media mix.

Nielsen is working with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to launch SMoX.me (Smart Mobile Cross Marketing Effectiveness) which helps brands measure the economic value of mobile advertising.

Meanwhile, last month UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) and partnered with Comscore to offer marketers a combined view of media consumption, including mobile, for the first time.