Bellwether figures cast little light on mobile sector

Having just read through the IPA (the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Bellwether report which it produces with NTC Economics, I’m sad to say that it doesn’t cast much light on how advertising spend is going in the mobile sector.
That’s because it classes mobile phone advertising - including SMS but excluding mobile TV - as Other Marketing.
So all Other Marketing feel by the greatest amount of any sector the IPA tracks. As you can see from the graph ‘Budget revisions in Q1′, it fell by around 7 per cent.

By contrast as I outlined here internet advertising budgets as whole for Q1 2008 have gone up.
It seems that there’s some very definite confusion in the market. Take this quote from Guy Phillipson, CEO of the IAB. Talking about display advertising online, he told the FT that,”Core formats in display are now growing at a faster rate than search [marketing], but text advertisements alongside search results on sites such as Google and Yahoo! still command the bulk of online spending.
So in Phillipson’s view mobile is part of internet spending. And why on earth is the IAP shoving mobile TV advertising in with standard TV? Surely they’re as different as chalk and cheese.
or is it just me that would class mobile as a form of internet advertising because it is interactive?

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