Forecast: This is the year mobile ads explode

Medialife

Spending will soar by 83 percent, to $17.73 billion

By Bill Cromwell

July 8, 2014

Call 2014 the year of mobile advertising.

It’s set to take off in a major way over the coming months, and by year’s end it will be the No. 3 form of advertising, surpassing print, radio and out of home.

That’s pretty impressive for a format that did not even exist a few years ago.

That prediction comes from eMarketer, the online advertising tracking firm, which predicts that mobile ad spending in the U.S. will shoot up by 83 percent this year, to $17.73 billion.

“By the end of this year, mobile will represent nearly 10 percent of all media ad spending, surpassing newspapers, magazines and radio for the first time to become the third-largest individual advertising venue, only trailing TV and desktops/laptops,” says the report.

Smartphones and tablets are reaching a critical mass, and the amount of time spent surfing the web on mobile devices is beginning to outpace desktop time.

This will lead to a huge shift in ad dollars over the next few years, notes the report.

Spending on mobile will soar another 50 percent next year, to $26.59 billion, compared to $32.01 billion for desktop advertising.

By 2016, mobile will be well ahead of desktop, with $37.49 billion to desktop’s $29 billion.

And by 2018, spending on mobile will be $58.33 billion, up from just $4.36 billion last year. At that point, nearly three-quarters of all digital spending will be mobile.

The spike in mobile advertising will spark a very healthy 2014 for the media economy. In fact, 2014 will see the biggest year-to-year spending jump in a decade.

EMarketer predicts ad spending will increase by 5.3 percent, the best growth since 2004, when spending bumped up 6.7 percent. It’s also the first time in a decade that spending growth has bettered 5 percent. Total spending will hit $180.12 billion.

In addition to mobile, gains will be driven by television, which is getting a boost from the Winter Olympics and political spending.

TV ad dollars will be up 3.3 percent, representing a $2.19 billion increase.

EMarketer remains fairly bullish on ad spending going forward, too. It predicts an increase of 5.1 percent next year, despite the absence of political and Olympic spending, and growth of 5.6 percent in 2016, when the next presidential election will take place, as well as the next Summer Games.