At The Practice, we’ve always championed mobile as the future as more and more of us become converts to on-the-go online activity. There are numerous advantages, but now, are marketers starting to see mobile advertising as a thorn in their side while consumers are increasingly seeing it as a day-to-day annoyance?

For advertisers, the benefits of the mobile environment are tenfold. For one, our phones can receive input at any time and from most places globally, enabling location-specific push messages, and adverts based on geography and trends. Now of course, QR codes are also big business for customer-brand interactivity and engagement. And to top it all off, by 2014, mobile Internet usage is predicted to surpass desktop Internet usage. Case in point, mobile’s no longer deemed ‘the second-screen’. Then why are advertisers now realizing its drawbacks?

There are a number of reasons why despite its obvious advantages, mobile is lacking. For one, despite targeted advertising based on location, marketers can’t map out customer profiles using cookies in the way they can on desktop. Apple’s ban on third-party cookies means that the data of iOS users can’t be taken by advertisers to target behavioural trends, and with most people using iPhones, this means a large customer opportunity lost. And even if advertisers are at some point able to target consumers across various Smartphone devices, (iPhone included), another disadvantage they’re going to experience is that they’ll need to optimize various landing pages specific to each one- definitely a monotonous, costly and time-consuming task.

And what about tablet devices? It’s all very well that both Smartphones and devices like the iPad are great for on-the-go surfing and have given new impetus to magazines and websites finding themselves with a new outlet. But what happens when we as users experience slow Internet connectivity, or worst of all, no Wi-Fi connection whatsoever? On-the-go means we’re going to encounter lapses in connection, and our viewing experience is also going to vary depending upon whether we’re using 3G, LTE or Wi-Fi. Adverts are more often than not going to add salt to the wound by slowing download speeds, making for more frustrated users.

There is some positive outlook though, in the form of apps. Mobile advertisers are focusing a lot of their efforts on ‘appsvertising’ Take popular game Angry Birds, for instance which generates around 1-million dollars in revenue per month from in-app ads, solely on the Android platform. While many of us dislike being bombarded with ads during mobile surfing, if we’re faced with them whilst playing a game, they’re likely to be much more effective. While this is an isolated example of mobile advertising success, one of the problems with ‘appsvertising’ is that marketers are finding it difficult to place ads in unfamiliar territory, unless placing them through a social media platform app such as Twitter and Facebook, or by using a middleman such as Appssavvy, to do this for them.

Do you think we’re being too cynical? After all, the mobile advertising space is relatively new, and who really knows how it’s going to pan out in the long run. How do you respond to Smartphone and tablet advertising? We’d love to hear your predictions for the future, so please tweet to and follow us @PracticeDigital, and ‘like’ us on Facebook.