Smartphones becoming mainstream device in many markets

London, 31st July 2012: BuzzCity, has today issued its latest quarterly report on the current trends dominating the mobile advertising industry. Key highlights include increasing levels of adoption dominating the first half of the year. BuzzCity’s global ad network has already served three-quarters of its annual traffic from last year in the first half of this year; using this as an indicator, BuzzCity predicts that global growth of mobile advertising traffic is set to double in 2012.

The appetite for mobile advertising has positively impacted the growth of the BuzzCity network in Q2, which grew 13%.  In the first six months of 2012 it served 96.4 billion banners. The report also highlighted growth hotspots like Costa Rica, which grew 104% in Q2, Malaysia (56%), Brazil (33%) and Turkey (18%).

According to the report, smartphone penetration has reached 47% across the network. In twenty countries, at least 25% of mobile surfers use smartphones to go online. Among the top smartphone markets are:

•    Saudi Arabia (94%)
•    UK (90%)
•    Spain (88%)
•    Singapore (80%)
•    China (87%)

Dr KF Lai, CEO, BuzzCity comments on the report: “We are seeing no signs of mobile advertising slowing down across the globe. Smartphones usage is becoming mainstream but key to driving further growth will be the creation of original local content.” Dr Lai continues: “Marketers who engage their users with compelling content beyond conventional mobile advertising norms will be the ones to stand out from the rest of the pack and win out in this growing market opportunity.”

To view the full report, which includes details of the top mobile handsets globally for internet usage, as well as an in-depth look at brands and content strategy in mobile advertising, please visit reports.buzzcity.com.