The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and research agency Work have released the results of their fourth annual Snapshot Survey into the mobile industry from an agency viewpoint.

The survey, conducted in October 2011, was completed by over 400 agency employees across 23 different agencies, making it the largest ever seen of its kind in the UK. It reveals that mobile advertising is less often being bought as an experiment, with 28 per cent of agencies “regularly including mobile as part of client proposals”, one third more than last year. However, 74 per cent of agencies still feel that client understanding of mobile is the biggest barrier to mobile taking a bigger share of digital spend, making it the largest barrier by far.

Measurement resurfaced as an issue throughout the survey. 31 per cent of respondents revealed that they have no idea about the possibilities for mobile campaign measurement –  an increase on the 2010 figure of 26 per cent. A new metric measured for 2011 was ‘how to plan mobile advertising’ with 32 per cent stating they had no idea how to do this.

mCommerce is the largest knowledge gap for agencies. Only 11 per cent of agencies claim to understand NFC (Near Field Commnications) well, and only 8 per cent understand mCommerce as a whole well. However, when asked later what the most exciting development for mobile advertising was, NFC came out as one of the top themes. Recent mCommerce research carried out by the IAB showed that 74 per cent of consumers stated that NFC services would be a good idea, so agencies clearly feel their knowledge must improve to keep up with potential customer adoption.

Finally, looking into the future, 90 per cent of respondents felt that mobile will be the fastest growing media for the next five years, and in particular that mobile search will be influential. 57 per cent said that search spend in mobile will overtake online search spend by 2015.

“It is fantastic to see that the percentage of agency employees with a good understanding of mobile advertising has doubled from 24 per cent in 2008, to 50 per cent in 2010,” says IAB senior mobile manager, Alex Kozloff. “However, with this advancement of the industry comes new pressure to look at areas such as tracking and measurement, something the IAB is working closely with the industry to improve. But overall, fantastic news to see that mobile is becoming an established part of the agency ecosystem.”

Some other key findings from the study:

• 28 per cent of respondents said that mobile was now a regular part of client proposals
• 50 per cent of agency employees have a good understanding of mobile advertising
• 98 per cent of agencies are spending money on mobile advertising
• 94 per cent of agencies are spending money on tablet advertising
• 55 per cent agree that mobile inventory is good value for money compared to other media