Mobile Ads To Surpass All Ad Spending Platforms

By 2020, mobile will make up a greater share of U.S. media ad spending than all traditional channels combined.

That remarkable projection comes from eMarketer, which expects mobile to account for 43% of media ad spending by 2020, reports MediaPost.

“Even the strongholds of TV, such as live sports and news, are starting to move online. People are consuming them on the go through mobile devices,” Martín Utreras, vice president, forecasting, eMarketer, notes in a new report. “Audiences continue to abandon traditional media and ad dollars follow.”

This year, mobile will account for $76.17 billion of domestic media ad spending. That’s easily more than the $69.87 billion going to TV, and far ahead of print’s $18.74 billion, radio’s $14.41 billion, and out-of-home’s $8.08 billion.

By 2022 -- which is the end of eMarketer’s forecasting period -- the research firm expects mobile ad spending to more than double TV spend.

By then, the channel will make up $141.36 billion of US media ad spending, while TV will account for $68.13 billion.

Contrary to conventional wisdom only a short time ago, it’s becoming clear that consumers are happy to watch just about any type of media content on their small screens.

Per Utreras, the major growth of mobile ad spending is largely due to devices’ relatively new video-streaming capabilities. He attributes the increased growth for mobile to Facebook and Google, "still driving double-digit growth. Part of that is driven by digital video growth coming from platforms like YouTube.”