For example, a fifth (20%) of companies are now employing mobile and push notifications, and these, in addition to email, mobile messaging and mobile apps, are seen by marketers as the channels which best lend themselves to customer retention.

The mobile opportunity in the US was highlighted in a much-referenced chart produced by Mary Meeker in her 2014 Internet Trends Report.

The original chart used US data to compare the average percentage of time spent in each media-type with ad spend.

Using the same sources but with the UK data, we recreated the chart to show the value of the opportunity that mobile could add in the UK. Of total time spent with media, mobile represents 20%, yet only 7% of ad spend.

Converted into GBP, that’s a whopping £1.9bn gap. This shortfall in investment applies to broader mobile marketing and optimisation activities as well as advertising spend, but it’s still a hefty gap.

The mobile investment gap

[Data sources: Time spent share data (UK) from eMarketer (March 2014); UK ad spend data from the Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report (April 2014).

Taking into consideration the fact that global mobile usage accounts for a quarter of total web usage and continues to grow rapidly, having a well-defined strategy for integrating mobile into broader marketing campaigns is more important than ever.

The good news is that around 75% of companies surveyed indicate that they have some sort of strategy in place for integrating mobile into broader marketing campaigns, which is an increase of 16% since last year.

Still, marketers are continuing to struggle to change their perceptions of mobile as a standalone channel, rather than using it as a platform for interaction alongside other channels.

Though the understanding that a joined-up customer experience is a key success factor is there, this report reveals mobile to be the obvious laggard.

Integration of channels with overall marketing activity

Aside from mobile, the new report examines further the shift from traditional to digital, the growing use of data to enhance display advertising and the dominant focus on acquisition away from retention.

The Cross Channel Marketing Report 2014 is based on a survey of almost 1,000 respondents in Q2 2014.