The latest findings from online market research firm InsightExpress suggest that mobile advertising continues to deliver better brand metrics than online advertising. The company found that
mobile campaigns through the fourth quarter performed 4.5 to five times better than online ones against norms for measures including unaided and aided awareness, message association, brand
favorability and purchase intent.
"Online campaigns continue to offer exceptional reach, flexibility and variety," said Joy Liuzzo, senior director of marketing and mobile research at
InsightExpress, in a statement. "However, the high levels of engagement, the explosion in technical capabilities, low levels of clutter and the novelty of mobile advertising all likely contribute to
increased brand impact." Within mobile media, the Internet has proven to be the most effective branding option compared to SMS text and mobile video. Mobile Web campaigns led to increases of 9
percentage points in unaided and aided awareness and 24 percentage points for ad awareness. SMS generated increases of 5 percentage points for unaided awareness, 10 for aided awareness and 18 for ad
awareness.
Mobile video is still emerging, but shows strength in boosting brand favorability, delivering an increase of 13 percentage points compared to 12 for the mobile Web and 7 for SMS.
Mobile campaigns overall led to a higher level of purchase intent than online ones across key consumer categories including travel, auto, retail and technology. But is the novelty factor that's partly
driving better ad results in mobile starting to wear off?
During the course of 2009, "upper funnel" brand metrics related to awareness have remained largely unchanged while others like
favorability and purchase intent are actually increasing. That trend indicates a greater emphasis on engagement in mobile campaigns.
As a more established medium, however, the desktop Web still
enjoys the advantage of being easier to buy than mobile. Despite the promise of better return-on-investment, launching a campaign across different handsets, mobile operating systems and networks remains more difficult than selling a brand online.