If a recent survey of 50 European brand-name companies from various industries is any indication, by 2011 at least half of them will be spending up to 25% of their marketing budgets on mobile marketing opportunities. The survey was commissioned by Airwide Solutions, a developer of mobile messaging infrastructure software, which certainly would love to see that finding bear out.

The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne in January, also found that by 2008, 89% of brands will use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audiences. About 33% by that same year plan to spend in excess of 10% of their marketing budgets on the medium. Furthermore, about 40% of brands already have used some form of marketing campaign that used mobile text messaging, and 18% have deployed multimedia messaging service (MMS) campaigns.

“We first commissioned the survey because we wanted to find out how serious the brands were about mobile marketing,” said Jay Seaton, chief marketing officer for Airwide Solutions. “The survey shows that a lot of them are further along than we all thought. In fact, a surprisingly high number have already deployed mobile marketing campaigns.”

The anticipated response effectiveness of mobile marketing campaigns is about 10%, a number that Seaton sees as very positive, and that could improve through further fine-tuning and investment in support systems (which, of course, Airwide provides). Collectively, the findings of the survey should be encouraging to mobile network operators that are worried about declining average revenue per user and the industrywide discounting of voice minute plans.

Still, the survey also suggested that factors continue to exist that inhibit the opportunity for more mobile marketing via text and MMS. More than 55% of responding brands are unsure how to reach a specific target audiences via mobile campaigns, and 58% are unsure about how to implement and measure an short message service campaign. Meanwhile, 61% are unsure how to implement and measure an MMS campaign.

“The primary inhibitor to this opportunity right now is that the companies doing mobile marketing campaign can't always target the right subscribers, and they have no way of really tracking their campaigns,” Seaton said.

According to the survey, brands expect mobile marketing to become far more effective than traditional direct mail, with 47% expecting between 5% and 15% of recipients to request more information or a sample. Another 34% of survey respondents expect between 5% and 20% of recipients to undertake a financial transaction after receiving a mobile marketing message.

Mobile phone users are expected to benefit from a range of incentives as part of the growth of mobile marketing, with half of brands to send special offers via the mobile phone. Other incentives will include discount vouchers, free gifts and preferential terms.