A recent study published by the IAB-UK and PricewaterhouseCoopers has showed that during 2009, total spend in the UK mobile advertising market grew by 32% to a new high of £37.6 million.

Among the specific formats of mobile advertising, mobile search increased the fastest with a 41% growth.

This growth came in spite of the fact that overall advertising spend in the UK slowed down during 2009. According to the report, mobile’s great performance was due to the better targeting capabilities and strong ROI.

Jon Mew, head of mobile at the IAB-UK (Internet Advertising Bureau), said: “These findings paint a positive picture of a compelling new advertising medium. Mobile is an effective, highly targeted and complementary advertising channel.”

Another positive factor from the report was the fact that every quarter showed consistent growth, with Q4 having a record display advertising spend of £5.5 Million. This represents an increase of 28% compared to the same period in the previous year.

The report looked at the individual mobile advertising formats. As shown in the chart below, Mobile Search increased the fastest with a +41% year-on-year growth.

The study also looked at which industry categories where driving this growth. Entertainment & Media came out on top (+61.5%), followed by Telecoms (+14.7%), Finance (+8.1%), Consumer Goods (+3.2%) and Government, Social and Political (+2.7%).

Eva Berg-Winters, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said: “There were two distinct approaches from advertisers and publishers. They either cut spend or continued to invest and develop their use of mobile – with a view to come out on top following the downturn.

“Recent investment in mobile has significantly outweighed the budgets cuts. This signals the belief that it is set to become an important medium.”

Other interesting findings from this report:

• Mobile internet usage increased by 21% in 2009 with 18.9m handsets now accessing the mobile internet every month
• 23% of time spent accessing internet is on a mobile device – average time spent surfing on a mobile is now 32 minutes a day
• Smartphone usage is up 70% and growing faster in the UK than Europe
• Unlimited data plans (unlimited internet access) are up 113% in 2009
• 77% of mobile internet sessions now exceed five minutes
• Time spent on social networks is now greater on mobiles than a PC – 41 minutes a day spent on Facebook via mobiles compared with 31 minutes a day via PC

To read the full press release please click HERE.