Russia's mobile advertising market could grow to $100 million by 2013 from $15 million now, and the sector will likely surpass some other ways of advertising in a few years' time, executives said at a conference.
"Mobile offers unique opportunities in targeting, understanding a customer's behavior, not only what the customer does but where the customer is ... at this particular moment, and this allows [us] to give the customer a very relevant message," Mikhail Gerchuk, chief commercial officer of Russia's top mobile phone operator MTS, told the conference.
The increase in mobile advertising is promising bumper returns in future years, especially in markets like Russia where Internet usage is growing rapidly and is forecast to do so for years to come as people's incomes find support from oil-based economic growth.
Top global advertising and marketing chiefs, gathered in Moscow for the International Advertising Association's two-day congress to consider growth strategies for the $450 billion industry, called for a new approach to consumers, based on a deeper understanding of their needs and the context they are living in.
The mobile phone has become an essential tool for the vast majority of people in the developed world and is moving fast on this path in developing countries like Russia and China. Since handsets are increasingly used to access the Internet, the advertising has to catch up, industry players said.
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