Responsive web design and mobile privacy, ‘real time advertising’ and Near Field Communication (NFC) are the most challenging areas of mobile marketing among media agency executives, according to a snap shot study of the industry conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

53 per cent of respondents claimed to have no experience in responsive web design and mobile privacy, while the figures for real-time advertising and NFC were 49 per cent and 48 per cent respectively.  The areas most exciting agency executives are Augmented Reality, 4G and NFC.

The annual study, now in its fifth year, was carried out in partnership with research agency, Work, to assess agency approaches to the mobile advertising industry over the last five years. It was conducted in December 2012, and was completed by more than 350 leading media agency employees.

64 per cent of respondents said they felt they have good access to industry research, and 48 per cent felt there were sufficient case studies available to them. However tracking and client education remains a barrier to increasing advertising spend on mobile. The study revealed that mobile is less often siloed within media agencies, and that the medium is increasingly sitting across more departments, such as communications, web and SEO teams.

Encouragingly, the perceived lack of internal resource has nearly halved year on year, with only 17 per cent claiming this is what is holding spend back. This figure is down from 33 per cent in 2011. Tracking and measurement is still an issue amongst agency experts – however this has also reduced since 2011, from 54 per cent to 31 per cent. The study found that more senior employees are taking mobile seriously, with 38 per cent of CEO and MDs driving the mobile agenda within agencies, compared to 25 per cent 12 months ago.