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.