Digital advertisers, take note – the market might look slow now, but the budget for advertising on mobile devices is going up, according to research firm Gartner Inc.
Global mobile advertising spending is expected to increase about $5 billion this year – up from $13.1 billion in 2013, to $18 billion by the end of this year. While that may not seem like a huge jump, in the next three years, that number is supposed to reach almost $42 billion.
“Over the next few years, growth in mobile advertising spending will slow due to ad space inventory supply growing faster than demand, as the number of mobile websites and applications increases faster than brands request ad space on mobile device screens,” said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner, in a statement.
However, she noted that between 2015 and 2017, we should expect to see better market conditions, as well as new targeting technologies, standardized marketing metrics, and providers consolidating in this space – factors that should all make mobile advertising more attractive to advertisers.
“The mobile channel will become more and more integrated into 360-degree advertising campaigns, eating up budget historically allocated to print and radio advertising,” Baghdassarian added.
The area with the highest growth? That’s slated to be video, as more and more consumers continue to buy tablets over the next few years. In the meantime, display formats are still expected to take the biggest chunk of revenue, with mobile display ad formats accounting for the majority of ads on mobile devices.
Beyond these two categories, mobile advertisers are also expected to use more and more location data to reach consumers. Gartner names a category called the “search/map ad type,” which either automatically pushes consumers messages, based on where they’re located, or takes advantage of location data from consumers who check in to places they visit using apps like Foursquare or Pinterest. So advertisers for local businesses – for example, your neighbourhood pub – are going to be most interested in location-based mobile advertising, Gartner’s report notes.
Advertisers are also more likely to favour using the Web to display mobile ads instead of using in-app displays, especially as developers begin to use more HTML5 tools in writing their code.
And while we should expect to see growth in mobile advertising in most parts of the world, North America is slated to be its stronghold, the Gartner report noted. While mobile advertising continues to grow, online advertising is mature in North America, and mobile advertisers have more spending power in this region.