Mobile adver­tis­ing rev­enue is set to leap from last year’s glob­al fig­ure of $9.6 bil­lion to $11.4 bil­lion this year, new research from Gart­ner predicts.

Mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies did bet­ter than the glob­al research com­pa­ny pre­dict­ed in Novem­ber last year, a fact which has caused it to revise its fore­cast for mobile phones adver­tis­ing rev­enue upwards. The increased uptake of mobile gad­gets lies behind the 19 per cent surge in rev­enues, the research reveals.

The glob­al mobile mar­ket is expanding

Gartner’s research vice pres­i­dent, Andrew Frank, explained that the address­able mar­ket for mobile adver­tis­ing has expand­ed into more parts of the world as increas­ing num­bers of new users spend more and more of their time on smart­phones and tablets. He added:

“This mar­ket will there­fore become eas­i­er to seg­ment and tar­get, dri­ving the growth of mobile adver­tis­ing spend for brands and adver­tis­ers. Mobile adver­tis­ing should be inte­grat­ed into adver­tis­ers’ over­all mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in order to con­nect with their audi­ence in very spe­cif­ic, action­able ways through their smart­phones and tablets.”

The research also indi­cates that “360-degree adver­tis­ing cam­paigns” will help North Amer­i­ca and West­ern Europe to catch up with (and maybe over­take?) the Asia Pacif­ic mar­ket. These cam­paigns fol­low users across the full range of their devices, what­ev­er plat­form they hap­pen to be hooked into at any one time.

A bright future for mobile advertising

Things look even bet­ter longer term, with Gart­ner pre­dict­ing a 400 per cent growth in mobile adver­tis­ing by 2016, tak­ing the total to $24.5 bil­lion. As economies in Africa, the Mid­dle East, East­ern Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca sta­bi­lize, mobile tech­nol­o­gy will be increas­ing­ly adopt­ed, expand­ing the mobile adver­tis­ing mar­ket still further.

In fact, mobile adver­tis­ing is on course to over­take mobile search, the Gart­ner study argues, although to begin with it’s like­ly to be split between in-app and mobile brows­er adver­tis­ing place­ment. Dur­ing 2015, web-based dis­play spend­ing is expect­ed to over­take that for in-app display.

And new devel­op­ments are afoot – less intru­sive ways of serv­ing adverts are in the pipeline, which are more engag­ing to users, not least by offer­ing reward schemes. App devel­op­ers could also start dis­trib­ut­ing free, ad-sup­port­ed apps, while agen­cies might pay for loca­tion-based ser­vices on web browsers. These are very like­ly to appeal to users and make an impact on busi­ness mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, the report anticipates.