US Mobile Ad Projections Revised Upward: $2.6 Billion In 2012

In the last several weeks there have been several bullish reports on mobile, culminating in Apple’s blowout holiday quarter where the company sold 37 million iPhones and 15 million iPads. Smartphone adoption is on a tear and various financial analysts now expect Google to generate mobile ad revenues of between $4 and $6 billion this year.

Accordingly, eMarketer has upwardly revised its mobile ad revenue projections for the US. Previously the firm thought mobile ads would bring in just under $2 billion. The new projection says that US mobile ad revenue will reach $2.6 billion in 2012. That’s a nearly $1 billion jump.

Search will form nearly half of the mobile ad spending according to eMarketer. This is validated by comments made on Google’s Q3 2011 earnings call in which SVP Nikesh Arora said, “Larry [Page] mentioned $2.5 billion as a run rate. Our revenue growth continues to accelerate even in mobile, driven primarily by mobile search.”

According to Efficient Frontier mobile search now constitutes 7 to 8 percent of its clients’ ad budgets. The SEM company also said that Google captured 96 percent of its clients’ mobile ad spend. And while there are a number of US mobile display ad networks with considerable revenue, Google is dominant overall.

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