New research from accounting firm KPMG shows that mobile devices and the pullback of advertising dollars are the two biggest disruptive forces today.

As more time and money is spent away from traditional channels, attention to mobile content consumption and social media will increase, KPMG said.

"The pullback of ad dollars is a factor of the economy," said Brian Hughes, Philadelphia-based partner at KPMG and co-leader of the firm's venture capital practice.

"On the mobile device, what's driving that is the introduction of the iPhone more than a year ago, and the number of applications developed for the device is remarkable," he said.

"The mobile device becoming the personal computer is clearly the biggest disruption in the next few years."

Forty-nine percent of the responding executives polled for this survey pointed to the cutback of ad dollars as the most disruptive today, while 40 percent indicated mobile devices turning into personal computers was most disruptive.

KPMG polled more than 200 media, advertising and marketing executives for this survey. It was conducted in collaboration with AlwaysOn, a venture capital new media firm.

Mobile, social â?¦
According to the survey, 75 percent of executives expect that advertisers will move more than a quarter of media time and spending away from traditional channels in the next five years.

The beneficiaries of this shift will likely be social networks and mobile marketing.

Forty-seven percent of those responding indicated that the key lesson learned from President Obama's use of social media for campaigning was that social networks can grab mindshare in society.

The president's campaign managers understood this phenomenon, both online and mobile social networking.

One of the chief architects of the social networking buzz around Mr. Obama was Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook, the No. 2 social networking site after MySpace.

However, even with that knowledge, 61 percent of executives said that less than 30 percent of ad agencies have plans in place to leverage social networking.

As for mobile marketing, only 65 percent of the respondents say media companies currently adapt less than a quarter of their content for mobile consumption.

Twenty-seven percent of the executives said the current content adaptation rate to mobile is between 26 percent and 50 percent.

But 87 percent of those responding expect that media companies will move more mobile content for mobile consumption in the next couple of years.

â?¦ and local
Location-based advertising was cited as the best marketing opportunity by 48 percent of the executives responding to the KPMG survey. Games and video each received 14 percent of the vote.

Venture capital is expected to finance most of the new mobile applications, KPMG said. Advertising will monetize those applications, the firm's survey showed.

"Advertising is going to be the big driver in monetizing mobile," Mr. Hughes said.

Mr. Hughes believes the key to mobile's growth is its role in the Internet ecosystem.

"Mobile is going to be the gateway to the Internet," he said. "Traditionally it was the computer on your desktop, but the future is mobile."

The economic slump may slow down the expected disruption, but not much else.

"The only thing to be alarmed about is the economy -- it's not the opportunity," Mr. Hughes said.

"The only thing that the economy will do -- if it is prolonged -- it'll push the opportunity out," he said. "But it's not going to kill the opportunity, that's for sure."