Mobile advertising adoption has been compared by trade association IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) to a ‘two-speed economy’ following the release of new figures on the state of the market.

The second annual Mobile Landscape Study found that two-thirds of marketers surveyed expect display campaigns will have a mobile component by 2016. The IAB previously reported 14% of digital was spent on mobile advertising in the last quarter of 2013.

Marketers are using more sophisticated metrics and are more open to increasing budgets for mobile activities, the IAB said. And 75% of agencies and advertisers also said publishers who lack a strong mobile presence or offering risk becoming less relevant to advertisers.

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The report found nearly half of all display campaigns have mobile components today, a figure expected to grow to nearly three quarters by 2016. Advertisers also show a growing awareness of mobile advertising, with the ratio of those who say they lack understanding decreasing from 23% last year to just 14% this year.

“It is noteworthy that we’ve closed the gap in terms of advertisers’ understanding the importance of mobile,” says IAB director of research, Gai Le Roy.

Key development areas nominated by marketers this year include location targeting, video and cross-screen targeting. The role of video in mobile ad content, for example, is forecast to grow 85% over the same timeframe.”

But the report shows that the number one barrier to further investment is measurement weaknesses. One quarter (25%) of respondents said this was the single biggest issue facing mobile advertising, up from 17% last year.

“The challenge before us now is to address measurement, which is something the IAB has deeply invested in,” says Le Roy. Last year, the IAB and Nielsen announced a mobile advertising audience measurement pilot in a bid to address industry demand for better mobile audience metrics.

Marketers were found to be more comfortable with the mobile web than with advertising contained within apps, despite the fact that a much higher proportion of consumer mobile use time is spent on apps rather than surfing the web on a mobile device instead.

The report was based on surveys of more than 100 marketing and media professionals in Australia.