The consummate consumer: Your audience is permanently switched on

Consummate Consumer: Impulsive and ready to interact at the drop of a hat. Who wouldn't want to tap into mobile marketing? 

As the 20th century drew to a close, futurologists predicted that we would by now be using our phones to order our shopping, watch football games and download recipes. While that has proved to be one of the few predictions that has taken longer to materialise than many expected, it is finally becoming a reality - and the opportunities for advertisers could prove significant.

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), mobile advertising in the UK has continued to grow quarter on quarter throughout the recession and was worth £28.6m last year, a 99.2% year-on-year increase. That is a tiny fraction of the £1.75bn spent on online advertising in the first half of 2009 alone, when, for the first time, more advertising pounds were spent on the internet than on television.

But Russell Buckley, chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association points out that mobile advertising is expanding rapidly. "Considering there wasn't a market five years ago, you could say it has grown more quickly than the internet in some ways - and certainly along the same trajectory," he says. That growth is likely to accelerate as handsets equipped with new technology, including mobile broadband, become ubiquitous and consumer behaviour changes.

Gartner, the IT research company, predicts that within three years more than half of internet users will be accessing the web via mobiles and other handheld devices. Buckley, who is also vice-president of Global Alliances at AdMob, which places ads on mobile websites for clients, points out that in developing nations like India, where PC penetration is low, the majority of internet activity already takes place on mobiles. "Some countries are effectively already living in a post-PC era," he says. Laptops and desktops are firmly entrenched in the west, but in the future, phones and personal organisers are likely to be the new gateway to the online world.

Ten years ago, using phones to download video clips, listen to music, play games or search the internet seemed a distant prospect. Now, those activities are commonplace. Research carried out by Orange earlier this year revealed the popularity of those practices among all age groups. Over half use their phones to access the internet, 64% send picture messages, 55% play games, 49% listen to music and 26% receive email. Some 87% use mobile media at home, and 73% when they are "out and about". Just under half said they used their phones to access the same sites they use on their PCs and 62% said they wanted their phones to do the same things their PCs can. The worlds of computing and telephony have already merged in the minds of many consumers.