Commentary from Melinda Varley in Business Spectator on the market for mobile marketing:

In the UK – the most sophisticated and saturated mobile market in Europe – marketers spent almost £29 million on mobile advertising in 2008, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Mobile Marketing Association now expects total spend to reach £1 billion by the end of 2009.

In the US, ad spend on mobile is expected to reach $US6.5 billion by 2012. And although in Australia the medium remains in its infancy, growth is poised to almost treble with communications specialist Telsyte forecasting that spend will grow to $20 million by the end of 2009 from just $7 million in 2008.