According to a recent report by eMarketer, spending on paid media will increase by 7% globally in 2017, taking it to a grand total of $584.14 billion, writes Graham Williams, the chief executive and co-founder of Cloudbanter. The report goes on to say that investment in mobile advertising has been the main driver of this increase, making up 24.4% of total advertising expenditure this year.

In an increasingly mobile and digital world, it is not difficult to see why mobile continues to take a bigger slice of the advertising pie each year. If advertisers and marketers want to reach the most targeted audience, they must look to utilise the best mobile platforms, as well as understand what type of content it going to excite and inspire their chosen audiences.

In this environment, and with mobile advertising spend growing all the time, we might assume that mobile operators are in a strong position to monetise their data. After all, they are gatekeepers to a huge amount of insight on mobile customers and should, on this basis, be attracting the lion’s share of interest from advertisers. Unfortunately this has not been the case with mobile operators struggling to monetise the services they offer and falling behind providers who, to add insult to injury, use the mobile operators own data against them via monetised over-the-top (OTT) services.

The challenge for mobile operators of monetising their data and apps continues unabated. In a world of big data, they are in a unique position to help advertisers deliver digital content to highly targeted, mobile audiences but most have failed to do so. However, thanks to the rise of technology which enables mobile operators to monetise their services more effectively, there is still an opportunity for them to regain the loyalty of their customers via monetised services based on users’ profile and preferences. Mobile messaging is an area which remains untapped for most advertisers and could provide a significant revenue source for mobile operators.

Mobile operators are facing a major challenge when it comes to driving revenue and profits, not to mention winning back customer loyalty and reducing churn rates. Inserting relevant digital advertising content into mobile messaging conversations is an ideal way of bringing back revenue to messaging, be it SMS, IM chat and voice plus monetisation of internet TV and other apps including customer care. By delivering controlled, targeted and lifestyle enhancing digital advert content to mobile users via their messaging and apps, mobile operators can expect to lower potential cost to the end user, drive additional revenue into their messaging platforms and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty together with increasing the average revenue per user (ARPU) industry measurement.

Relevancy is everything in a digital world, and if mobile operators want to remain relevant they need to find more effective ways of monetising their platforms. With mobile users becoming increasingly used to and comfortable with digital content in various forms and provided it is relevant to them and does not interfere with their messaging conversation in anyway, operators have an opportunity to offer this and win back the heart and minds of their customers.