Business is about to pick up. That’s a concise summary of Gartner’s new report probing global mobile advertising revenue.
Forecast to reach $11.4 billion in 2013, worldwide mobile ad revenue has climbed significantly from $9.6 billion last year. But we still haven’t seen real growth yet, says Gartner. The firm projects that worldwide revenue will reach $24.5 billion in 2016 with mobile advertising revenue creating new opportunities for the likes of app developers, ad networks, and mobile platform providers.
“The mobile advertising market took off even faster than we expected due to an increased uptake in smartphones and tablets, as well as the merger of consumer behaviors on computers and mobile devices,” says Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. “Growth in mobile advertising comes in part at the expense of print formats, especially local newspapers, which currently face much lower ad yields as a result of mobile publishing initiatives.”
Gartner believes that mobile display ad spending will grow and take over from mobile search. It will initially remain divided between in-app and mobile Web (in-browser) placements — reflecting consumer usage — although after several years of in-app dominance, Web display spending will take over in-app display from 2015.
“Smartphones and media tablets extend the addressable market for mobile advertising in more and more geographies as an increasing population of users spends an increasing share of its time with these devices,” adds Andrew Frank, research vice president at Gartner. “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/or tablets.”
