LONDON — UK consumers are spending insane amounts of time on their phones. So why aren’t advertisers putting proportionate amounts of money in to the devices?

“Because the mobile marketplace has been relatively fragmented, it has made it feel a little bit difficult and risky for people to get executing on phones in the way that consumer behaviour would lead you to think you should. I see a really big gap emerging,” says Stewart Easterbrook, executive director for performance and digital development at Starcom MediaVest Group Europe.

More than half of the UK population now owns a smartphone.

“People are spending more than half their communications time on mobile devices but we’re spending only 10%, 12%, 14% of our ad budgets on those devices-  there’s clearly an opportunity to close that gap.”

We spoke with Easterbrook as part of our series titled “The Road to Cannes,” a preview of the Festival and an overview on the state and future of digital media by a range of thought leaders. The series will be published over the next four weeks.  The series is sponsored by Videology.