MOBILE AGENCIES
(Click on the column headers to change sorting order.)
| Rank | Agency | Income from this specialism | Year to | Previous year | UK staff |
Founded in UK |
Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mobile Interactive Group | £6,268,750 | 04/09 | £4,229,600 | 127 | 2004 | independent |
| 2 | Sponge | £1,067,000 | 12/08 | £1,168,995 | 22 | 2002 | independent |
| 3 | Bluepod Media | £1,053,856 | 03/09 | £264,737 | 15 | 2007 | independent |
| 4 | Inside Mobile | £989,508 | 12/09 | £644,974 | 14 | 2006 | M&C Saatchi |
| 5 | Que Pasa | £885,191 | 10/09 | 16 | 2000 | independent | |
| 6 | YOC | £805,800 | 12/09 | 12 | 2000 | independent | |
| 7 | Hypertag | £204,246 | 08/09 | £368,209 | 11 | 2001 | independent |
These agencies were unable to supply UK Turnover figures
| Agency | UK staff |
Founded in UK |
Owner | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buongiorno Digital UK | 5 | 2007 | Mitsui | ||||
| Incentivated | 25 | 2001 | independent | ||||
| Joule | 6 | 2008 | WPP | ||||
| Marvellous Ideas | 18 | 2002 | Aegis Media | ||||
| mBlox | 150 | 1999 | independent | ||||
| Netsize | 10 | 1998 | Gemalto | ||||
| Shock Concepts | 5 | 2007 | independent | ||||
| Umee | 12 | 2007 | independent | ||||
| We Love Mobile | 10 | 2007 | independent |
Sector overview
The mobile industry has witnessed various landmark events over the last year, giving mobile specialist agencies reason to be optimistic. Highlights included Apple's App Store clocking up 10bn downloads and Nokia's Ovi Maps being downloaded more than a million times in a week. Most encouragingly, mobile non-natives Apple and Google bought into the mobile ad sector by purchasing Quattro Wireless and AdMob respectively, for an estimated combined total of $1bn. Apple later announced its iAds mobile ad platform.
The emergence of touch screen devices and increasing take-up of flat rate data plans among UK mobile users is leading people to expect more PC-like experiences on their phones. This has created an increasing enthusiasm from agencies to encourage their clients to commission mobile apps, and the iPhone has benefitted from this.
Call the Apple ecosystem a walled garden, but it's raising expectations about what's possible. For example, Google says the number of apps on its Android Market store increased 70%in the first three months of 2010, to 38,000. This still trails Apple's App Store, which contains more than 150,000 apps as of early 2010, but the growth figures are indicative of the growing realisation by agencies of just how important the platform will become.
Publishers are also taking up mobile and are displaying an increasing willingness to expand beyond apps into fully integrated mobile strategies. Additionally, the UK launch of Mobile Media Metrics early in 2010, which draws on operator log data to provide actual site traffic, by both ComScore and the GSMA means media agencies and planners can plan mobile campaigns with a greater degree of confidence.
Advertisers are also still faced with the problem of just how to reach a mass audience on mobile. Even though mobile phones using Apple and Google operating systems are increasingly powerful and popular with subscribers, they only reach a small percentage of the potential mobile audience. Most brands are unlikely to channel significant funds into mobile until this has been cracked. Social media is becoming a key traffic driver for mobile, but any brand wanting to harness this interaction still faces a steep learning curve. One iPhone app doesn't make you a mobile specialist, and there's still very much a role for agencies that live and breathe the medium.