• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, February 3, 2012

Marketing budgets are indeed following the hype and the eyeballs in 2012 as a clear majority of both marketers and agencies tell eConsultancy they are increasing their spend on core mobile channels this year. In its survey of 500 companies and agencies (in partnership with Experian Marketing Services), eConsultancy found that 57% of company marketers plan to invest in mobile apps in 2012, and 48% in QR code programs.

Clustered beneath these high-profile mobile channels comes investment in mobile commerce (34%), mobile advertising (31%), mobile-optimized emails (31%), mobile search marketing (28%) and SMS (25%). Ten percent or less of marketers were interested in mobile couponing, near-field communications (NFC) or MMS platforms, however.

On the agency side, the priorities in mobile were similar, although these respondents said 67% of their clients were investing in mobile apps and 44% in QR codes, 37% in m-commerce and mobile advertising, 31% in mobile search and 30% in mobile-optimized email.

Since eConsultancy did not parse out mobile Web investment, it is possible that respondents included this development in the “app” category. Nevertheless, eConsultancy found that as late as October 2011, 70% of the company sites they visited were not designed with mobile browsers in mind. They also found that only 14% of marketers were adjusting email design for mobile reading.

At the eConsultancy blog, head of research Linus Gregoriadis is quoted as saying that companies are finally getting the word on mobile optimization for a very simple reason -- the executives themselves are seeing the bad experiences that a non-optimized site renders. “Senior executives at home on their tablets and smartphones are wondering why the user experience for their own company Web sites is sub-standard,” he says.

The move to mobile investment is part of a larger drive toward digital budgets generally. eConsultancy also found that 68% of companies are increasing their digital spend overall, compared to 45% who say they are upping their overall marketing budgets and only 16% who are increasing “traditional” marketing.