36% of the Top advertisers in the UK don’t have sites that are optimised for mobile, that’s the finding in the latest report from the Internet Advertising Bureau.

In August 2013 only 11% of sites across the top 100 advertisers were responsively designed but for 2014 that figure has shot up to 24%. That percentage makes the UK European leader in responsively designed sites with 15% in Spain, 13% in France and Italy and only 7% in Germany.

In the automotive sector the UK has an unmatched 100% optimised mobile sites, while the rest of Europe sits at 85%. FMCG brands in the UK lag significantly behind the rest of the Europe that with a lowly 22% of sites optimised for mobile, while the figure stands at 41% in Spain, 44% in France and 55% in Germany.

As mobile usage is poised to overtake desktop usage these figures make for stark reading, as several major brands risk being left behind in the digital space. With a predominantly mobile web user behaviour and information architecture will be subject to possibly huge transformations, in the same sort of disruptive wave that accompanied the advent of the web.

To avoid being the equivalent of the bricks and mortar businesses that lost out hugely to emerging dotcoms, it’s essential that major brands bring that 36% (a worrying 46% in Europe) down to 0% as quickly as possible.

The Head of Mobile at IAB, Alex Kozloff, went on to explain "Mobile optimisation for brands can no longer be considered a nice to have, but a hygiene factor. From the IAB's RealView research, we know 78% of recent purchases involved a connected device, and advertisers that are not mobile optimised are closing their shop doors to consumers that want to interact with them."