Last week, the Mobile Marketing Association, or MMA, unveiled a serious mobile study with a most Dr. Seuss-ian name. The “Smart Mobile Cross Marketing” study, or SMoX for short, uses case studies to prove that shifting more budget to mobile advertising can improve campaign performance.

If you’re a mobile marketer who has felt alone in the wilderness as you proclaim the value of the mobile channel, this study is for you. (You’ll find it here.) In particular, you’ll enjoy reading about how AT&T learned that instead of spending only 1 percent of its advertising budget on mobile, the campaign target (18 year olds) and objective (increase awareness) warranted spending 16 percent. The MMA is hitting the road to talk about SMoX. You can register for one of these events here.

The AT&T case study also showed that performance depends on the ad unit. Not surprisingly, larger banners resulted in higher awareness than smaller ones.

It’s not a Gox…

Overall, the case study gives ammunition to the argument that brands may be at risk of under-spending on mobile. That does not mean, however, that they should simply recreate AT&T’s playbook.

Rather, brands and agencies need to start where AT&T began: with an understanding of their target audience and objectives.

… or a Fox in Socks

If, for example, your target is in its 40s, it probably isn’t spending as much time on mobile devices as the under-20 set. This cohort will visit different sites and use different apps, which means your media weight and targeting should differ, too.

Perhaps your objective is more bottom-line driven. If your marketing has to generate users, revenues, or qualified leads, you should consider alternatives to banners. Mobile game developers have helped usher in a new type of ad – the in-feed social media creative unit – and it works. It’s so effective, as a matter of fact, that some have estimated that one half of all of Facebook’s mobile revenues come from app install ads.

Back in the early 2000s, I worked for a video game publisher that was under-spending on digital. Our media agency knew this but didn’t know how to tell us. Eager to do right by its client without stepping on any toes, the agency decided to make its point in a very creative way. They brought C-level executives from major gaming websites to talk about how much our competition was spending with them.

There is nothing more powerful than realizing that your rivals know something you don’t. It didn’t take long for all of us to rebalance our media spending accordingly.

Marketers: don’t wait for your media agencies to get creative with you. Tell them you want to evaluate your spending by channel and in light of your target consumer and goals. They should be able to help you estimate the impact of spending more on mobile marketing (or any other tactic).

I suspect you’ll have your own SMoX story to tell as a result.