Forecast: Nearly Three-Quarters Of Digital Ad Spending To Be Mobile By 2019

Forecaster eMarketer has projected that this year mobile ad spending in the US will effectively reach parity with the desktop. By 2019, the company says, mobile advertising will represent 72 percent of all US digital ad spending.

If time spent and ad spend were in alignment, mobile advertising would already be worth more than spending on PC-based advertising. However that’s not the case.

According to eMarketer’s forecast mobile display spending will exceed search this year and continue to widen the gap throughout the forecast period. Here’s what the numbers look like in 2015 and 2019 according to the company’s estimates:

2015

• Mobile display: $14.7 billion
• Mobile search: $12.9 billion

2019

• Mobile display: $34 billion
• Mobile search: $28.4 billion

Ad spending within apps will outpace the mobile web by almost 3X according to the eMarketer projection. In 2015 the company expects almost $21 billion in in-app ad spending vs. just under $8 billion for the mobile web. At the end of the forecast period (2019), the gap is roughly the same: $30 billion (apps) compared with roughly $11 billion (mobile web).

App install ads will account for about 10 percent of US mobile ad spending with most of that coming in a mobile display context. Indeed, app-install ads are expected to account for roughly 20 percent of the overall mobile display ad spend in 2015.

While “directionally” the forecast is undoubtedly correct — more ad dollars will follow usage trends — I’m skeptical that nearly three-fourths of US digital ad spending will be mobile by 2019.