Mobile adver­tis­ing will account for 59.6 per cent of all US dig­i­tal ad spend­ing by 2017, rep­re­sent­ing a mas­sive increase from the mere 2.1 per cent it attract­ed in 2010.

So says eMar­keter, in its lat­est esti­mates on US adver­tis­ing spend­ing which track a fun­da­men­tal shift away from search to mobile over a few short years. Mobile will scoop 22.1 per cent of the total dig­i­tal ad spend by the end of this year alone, and the trend is ris­ing steeply. If you’re hold­ing media jobs for mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies, expect to get very busy over the next four years.

Mobile adver­tis­ing will seize search’s crown — and maybe display’s, too

Search still grabs the lion’s share of the dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing spend (eMar­keter pegs it at $19.6 bil­lion by the end of 2013) — but if it’s cur­rent­ly the alpha male of the adver­tis­ing pride, it has a new con­tender for the crown in mobile.  That $19.6 bil­lion cov­ers ads on desk­tops and lap­tops as well as tablets, smart­phones and oth­er Net-enabled devices.

Mobile adver­tis­ing is also draw­ing dol­lars from dis­play ads: this year, mobile accounts for 21.7 per cent of the total dig­i­tal dis­play spend ($17.6 bil­lion), but by 2017 it’s set to suck up 48.4 per cent. OK, that’s a lit­tle slow­er than search but it’s still pret­ty darned impressive.

Search is a con­sid­er­ably more heav­i­ly favored for­mat in mobile adver­tis­ing than video, and will attract 51.5 per cent of all spend­ing in 2013, eMar­keter pre­dicts. Between them, dis­play, ban­ners, video and oth­er for­mats will remain below this lev­el in the mobile adver­tis­ing space, at 44.8 per cent. But in line with the rest of dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing, dis­play for­mats are grow­ing faster than search on mobile, although still not fast enough to over­take it by 2017.

The new age of mobile advertising

The lat­est fig­ures from eMar­keter rep­re­sent an upward revi­sion on its pre­vi­ous fore­cast for mobile adver­tis­ing spend­ing, which was released in June 2013.  The for­mat-by-for­mat esti­mates are based on report­ed rev­enues from lead­ing ad-sell­ing com­pa­nies, as well as data from “bench­mark sources” (i.e., Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers and the Inter­net Adver­tis­ing Bureau), pro­jec­tions from allied research com­pa­nies and emerg­ing trends in con­sumer inter­net usage.

One thing looks cer­tain: media jobs in mobile adver­tis­ing are set to pro­lif­er­ate over the next few years. Big time.