SAN FRANCISCO: Some 60% of mobile marketers are not concerned about app overload, or have never heard of it, according to a new global survey that suggests the industry can be optimistic about the future of app marketing.

YouAppi, a start-up that specialises in mobile ad-serving technology solutions, commissioned Dimensional Research to survey 327 in-house, agency and ad tech mobile marketers to gauge their views about the app ecosystem.

User acquisition (86%), engagement (68%) and segmentation (55%) emerged as their top three priorities for 2017 when it came to the customer journey, with just 50% citing app re-engagement as a priority.

Nearly four-in-five (78%) mentioned user acquisition when asked what they are using to meet their customer journey priorities, while only 51% cited app re-engagement.

The researchers found this encouraging because a study from comScore last year showed that 49% of US smartphone owners download zero apps in a typical month, which sparked some concern among mobile marketers at the time.

"Those in the trenches of mobile marketing are optimistic regarding the future of app marketing when user acquisition is still the leading tactic as well as the one delivering the best ROI and so few are concerned about app overload," said Diane Hagglund, Founder and Principal of Dimensional Research.

The survey also revealed that video will continue to grow in 2017 because three-quarters (74%) of respondents said they will increase their investment in mobile video. Just 9% plan to lower their mobile video budgets.

Video for social media and in-app video emerged as the most popular ad format (48%), followed by brand video advertising (38%), video for the mobile web (36%) and rewarded video (31%).

For paid social campaigns, respondents said that Facebook delivered the best ROI, with 89% saying that Facebook was the most effective, followed by Instagram (41%) and then Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest.

They also indicated that 2017 would see them investing in data-driven technologies with proven business value and revenue potential, such as machine learning (37%), mobile payments (25%) and artificial intelligence (23%).

Commenting on this last finding, YouAppi CEO Moshe Vaknin, said: "As a data-driven company, we're excited to see that most mobile marketing professionals plan to invest in technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will enable them to better analyse and use their data to improve campaign performance."

Data sourced from YouAppi, Recode; additional data by Warc staff