While 91 per cent of Asia Pacific marketers appreciate the importance of the mobile marketing channel, almost three quarters of agencies say most of their clients don’t have a strategy in place.

Results from the third wave of research by Warc with the Festival of Media Asia Pacific and the Mobile Marketing Association suggest that mobile is still not a priority for brand owners.

The majority of respondents (78 per cent) admitted that ten per cent or less of marketing budgets were currently allocated to mobile, a fall of two per cent since last year. However, almost all expect to see mobile’s share of budget grow by up to 30 per cent by 2019, and nearly a third believe budgets will rise by more than half in five years’ time.

Where formal strategies are in place, mobile is being integrated into other marketing campaigns much more than in the past, with 40 per cent of respondents reporting close integration, compared with just 27 per cent last year.

The January study took in 316 respondents from 24 markets in Asia Pacific, and follows previous iterations in February and August last year.

Other findings revealed that the majority of respondents (61 per cent) felt that programmatic buying – the automatic buying and selling of display ads, would become more important to marketing strategies by 2019, with almost a third (30 per cent) saying it would be ‘very important.’

Relevant skills were seen as the greatest barrier to growth of mobile marketing this year, by 45 per cent of respondents, aligning with thoughts on programmatic buying, where 52 per cent admitted to having little or no knowledge of it.

The 2014 survey is released ahead of Festival of Media Asia Pacific which takes place at Capella Hotel in Singapore from March 16-18.

“Instead of looking at mobile in isolation as a marketing channel with a certain set of capabilities, brands need to leverage its unique features to innovate and push their creative limits,” says MMA Asia Pacific managing director Rohit Dadwal. “This is our third study with Warc and Festival of Media Asia, and the results are definitely encouraging. As we see more brands choose to devote greater attention to mobile, it won’t be long before mobile takes its true place in the advertising mix.”

Among the study’s other findings:

• The most innovative markets for mobile are China (43 per cent), Singapore (38 per cent), Japan (33 per cent) and Australia (31 per cent).

• Travel, transport and tourism are currently seen as the most innovative industries using mobile, up 11 per cent from 23 per cent in 2013. Other innovative industries included leisure and entertainment (32 per cent), telecoms (29 per cent) and financial services (29 per cent).

• Multi-screening is now viewed as the most significant mobile consumer behaviour, ahead of mobile payments which was cited top in 2013.

• Location-based marketing is viewed as crucial to both current (73 per cent) and future marketing activities (79 per cent) in the region.

• The fastest growing technology in terms of adoption is the mobile wallet, intended to be utilised by 35 per cent of respondents in 2014/15, before rising to 62 per cent adoption in 2019.

• The use of QR codes, currently deployed in 45 per cent of the marketing activities of those surveyed, is expected to halve over the next five years, suggesting the technology is viewed as somewhat dated in such a fast-evolving industry.

Samsung, whose smartphones are the most prevalent in Asia Pacific was recognised as the most innovative brand in 2014, with a share of ten per cent of all responses. Respondents also believed Samsung to be the most innovative brand in last year’s survey, but at a much higher rate (30 per cent). Other innovative brands included Coca Cola, Apple, McDonalds, Unilever, Nike, Proctor and Gamble and Google.

Detailed survey findings can be downloaded by following the link.