Mobile Ad Revenues To Surpass Newspapers, Magazines, Radio This Year — Forecast

According to a new forecast from eMarketer, total media spending in the US will see its largest increase in a decade reaching $180.1 billion. The firm says that the growth will be lead by TV and mobile. Overall digital ad spending will represent almost 30 percent of all US ad spending this year according to […]

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According to a new forecast from eMarketer, total media spending in the US will see its largest increase in a decade reaching $180.1 billion. The firm says that the growth will be lead by TV and mobile.

Overall digital ad spending will represent almost 30 percent of all US ad spending this year according to eMarketer, which bases its forecasts on a wide range of third party data including other firms’ media spending forecasts.

Media spending forecast

The eMarketer forecast predicts that mobile advertising will represent roughly 10 percent of all media ad spending. That would mean it would exceed traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and radio — reportedly for the first time.

Mobile will capture 9.8 percent of overall media spending this year; newspapers will represent 9.3 percent, magazines 8.4 percent and radio 8.6 percent. While these precise figures may or may not be accurate they represent the directional spending trend.

In terms of real dollars, eMarketer says PC ad spending will reach roughly $33 billion this year and mobile will see $17.7 billion for a total of roughly $50 billion in digital ad spending in 2014. I believe the mobile estimate is aggressive however. I suspect it will be closer to $14 or $15 billion, which would still be very impressive (growing from just over $7 billion this past year).

The growth in mobile ad spending is a response to dramatic changes in consumer behavior. Last week comScore reported that mobile devices “accounted for 60 percent of total digital media time spent” in May. And mobile apps themselves captured 51 percent of all digital media time spent.

eMarketer spending by company

A small number of firms dominate digital ad revenue. Google and Facebook lead this group, which will increase its total share of the digital revenue pie through 2016 according to eMarketer.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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