With the growth in mobile advertising, both small and large brands are starting to invest heavily in the channel, proven by a new report from advertising network BuzzCity which claims that 33.7 billion banner ads were served across its network in the third quarter of 2011.

In addition to the number of mobile banner ads, BuzzCity predicts that the network will double its performance by the end of 2011. More than 87 billion mobile banner ads have been served in 2011 so far compared to the 52.8 million ads that were served in 2010.

“We have reached a scale with mobile advertising that we can finally draw conclusions about,” said Michael de Souza, vice president of media at BuzzCity, Singapore.

“The No. 1 message from this data is that mobile advertising continues to grow,” he said.

BuzzCity is a global mobile advertising network.

Small serve
According to the BuzzCity report, the 33.7 billion mobile banner ads were served across more than 8,100 sites and resulted in 300 million unique visitors per month.

This growth accumulates to an 11 percent quarter-to-quarter growth for BuzzCity.

However, the Q3 growth slowly slid compared to the 30 percent quarter-to-quarter growth the company saw for both Q1 and Q2.

The average cost-per-click for mobile ads averages two cents.

According to the report, brand campaigns from consumer packaged goods and mobile companies made up the majority of activity.

As far as handsets, Nokia made up 52 percent of mobile surfing activity. BlackBerry accounted for 11 percent and Samsung generated 10 percent.

“Mobile manufacturers seem like a natural best fit for advertising, but we’ve been surprised about the amount of activity from carriers over the past 18 months,” Mr. de Souza said.

“Carriers are realizing they need to start promoting their own services on ad networks to get better results,” he said.

“For consumer packaged goods, mobile advertising makes sense because marketers are trying to reach a mass market, and they are starting to see that the channel works and are allocating a more significant share of marketing budgets to it.”

Mobile world
The study also looked at how mobile advertising stacks up by world region.

Seventy-eight percent of banner ads were served by BuzzCity’s top twenty countries.

The top five countries in BuzzCity’s network are India, Indonesia, United States, Vietnam and Brazil.

Brazil is the newest addition to BuzzCity’s list of top mobile advertising regions, breaking more than one billion ads served during Q3.

The research also looked at Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Nigeria, Poland, Britain, Egypt and Turkey.

“Latin America is becoming a hot spot for mobile advertising, and we expect to see much more activity from Mexico in the coming months as well,” Mr. de Souza said.

“There are also bargains to be had in the Middle East and in Turkey,” he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York