It’s been a couple of months since I took a look at the figures released by AdMob on the number of ads served to mobile devices. It was worth taking a break – as I predicted in my previous article, the number of ads served actually fell in February. The January numbers showed spectacular growth, but that was something of an anomaly, a blip driven by the large number of devices coming online after the Christmas period.

So if we compare the numbers for March with those for January, we see a growth of 9.6% - but since January saw a spike, perhaps a more meaningful comparison is with December 2009. That gives an increase of a remarkable 45% overall, in the space of just three months, but as with all statistics, you have to look beyond the headline figures – and in this case, the picture changes. The numbers above refer to the growth in mobile ads worldwide – according to AdMob, some 16.7 billion ads were served in March around the globe. But there are significant regional variations.

Take the North American market, where 8.2 billion ads were served in March. That makes it the single biggest market in the world, with 49% of the worldwide total – but growth since December was 'only' 39.7%. That’s still a spectacular increase; if that quarterly rate is sustained, then March 2011 will see 31 billion ads served in North America alone, almost double the number served to the entire world in March 2010. The European market is also growing – but the powerhouse behind the increasing numbers is Asia. The total number of ads is only half that for North America - but growth over the quarter was an explosive 72%. If that is sustained, then this time next year Asia will overtake North America as the largest market, with an astonishing 36 billion ads.

Of course, all of this is speculation, and shouldn't be relied upon. The increasing number of phones based on Google's Android OS may have an effect, along with the 3G-enabled iPad and the iPhone 4G. It also remains to be seen at what point the North American market becomes sated, while demand in China may still be ramping up. Looking at it from a marketing perspective, any multi-national company planning a campaign which incorporates mobile ads needs to be paying attention to just how big the Asian market is becoming. You can find the AdMob reports here.

If someone told you that your marketing and advertising was failing to target a significant market segment - one that makes up a sixth of the population, one that spent over a trillion dollars last year - would you be concerned? You should be, according to a survey commissioned by Orci.  Just over half of respondents prepared no materials in Spanish to target the Hispanic market, and another 32% had at most 10% of their material in Spanish.

Those statistics suggest a remarkable degree of complacency by the marketers who responded, and the survey was commented on by both Forbes and Advertising Age. What should the marketers do about it? Presumably they should go out and find an agency with specialist knowledge of the Hispanic market and start targeting this neglected segment.

But maybe companies should also take a look at the survey in conjunction with the results of the Pew Foundation report from 2007, which, while stressing the bilingual nature of the Hispanic population, also found that 88% of second generation Hispanic adults and 94% of third and later generations spoke English very well, although they still speak Spanish.

Also, Hispanic marketing isn’t as simple as getting materials and ads done in Spanish. Cuban-Americans are different than the Puerto Rican community, who are different than Mexican Americans, and once marketers go down the road of specific Spanish-language Hispanic advertising and marketing efforts, it can be a fragmented and expensive effort.  If you believe that your current efforts are reaching a significant portion of the Hispanic population through English at some point, then you will not do more specifically aimed at Hispanics unless there is a compelling reason.

What would be a compelling reason?  Products that skew Hispanic, proof of return on investment and an expectation of significant sales growth from the Hispanic market. Do the survey results bear this out?

Orci’s press release noted the survey was sent to 9,300 senior marketers at Fortune 1000 companies in February 2010.  The results available on Orci’s site contained no data on the actual number of respondents, so there is no way to know what the final sample was.  This is unusual – and disturbing.  While it’s normal for companies to spin results of surveys and reports to be as favourable as possible and to use them to generate business, it’s very unusual to have sent out a survey to over 9,000 people and then not release the respondent sample size.

• 60% of respondents had Marketing/Ad budgets of $1 million or less – which means the sample skewed to the small end of the Fortune 1000 – it’s not clear how representative it was;
• Only 4% of respondents believed their products were more suited for the Hispanic than the General Market in the US.  There wasn’t a huge number who were looking at a big Hispanic skew.;
• While 8% of respondents said they expected sales to Hispanics in the US to increase significantly in the next 12 months, only 26% said they expected them to increase moderately and over 50% said they expected them to stay the same – which may explain why 38% said they didn’t believe an increase in marketing budget to Hispanics would be justified with a return on investment and 29% believed what they were doing now was appropriate.

I guess I should apologize here and now to Orci for having picked apart their survey; there is nothing particularly special about it, nothing that separates it from similar efforts by other companies. And that's my point: next time you see an article which quotes statistics and conclusions from a survey, don't necessarily believe what you read.