When walking around the local mall you rarely see a shopper without a mobile device in their hand. So it’s no surprise that 37.1 percent of consumers use smartphones and 19.4 percent use tablets when shopping locally, according to BIA/Kelsey‘s Consumer Commerce Monitor™.

Not only do consumers use these devices for shopping locally, but they do so frequently. Thirty-three percent of tablet users and 40.3 percent of smartphone users use them once a day or more for shopping locally.

There is an apparent disconnect between consumer’s heavy use of smartphones and tablets to shop and SMBs adoption of advertising with these devices. SMBs are devoting just 5 percent of their total ad spend to mobile advertising, according to BIA/Kelsey‘s Local Commerce Monitor™. That 5 percent is spread among SMS, search, display, and other forms of advertising on smartphones and tablets.

Looking just at apps we see that 17.1 percent of consumer use apps regularly for local shopping and 3 percent make purchases based on apps. Only 9 percent of SMBs are tapping into this market and use apps for advertising.

While only a small portion of SMB budgets are going towards advertising through smartphones and tablets, its is providing big returns. Four of the top 10 media, based on ROI, are related to advertising through these devices. Mobile deals, mobile apps, mobile banners and location aware mobile ads all were felt to have provided SMBs with between 10 and over 20 times the return on spending by at least 40 percent of SMBs who utilize them.

Not only are SMBs who participate in advertising with smartphones and tablets seeing big results, the consumer base for use of these devices when shopping locally is expected to grow. Fourteen percent of those who do not currently use a tablet or smartphone for shopping locally say they plan to do so in the next six months. So for all of the SMBs out there who are not capitalizing on the mobile advertising opportunity, it is definitely a move that would be wise to make.