Global Mobile Advertising Revenue Hits $19.3 Billion

The U.S. IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB Europe, and IHS Technology revealed Wednesday their global figures for mobile advertising revenue.

It soared a massive 92 percent to $19.3bn (€14.6bn) in 2013 from $10.1bn (€7.6bn) in 2012, confirming the adoption of mobile as an essential element of the marketer’s toolkit.

Mobile display shows the highest growth at 123.4 percent, and mobile search, up 92.1 percent, flourishes mainly driven by smartphone penetration as affordable data plans fuel location-based search-on-the-go.

Messaging, itself up 19.4 percent, might not be sharing as much robust growth due to migration from operator-owned messaging services (e.g. SMS and MMS) to alternative platforms.

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Successful messaging innovation, particularly in Asia, reinforces the commonly held industry belief that mobile players need to be ahead of the curve.

Search remains the dominant segment representing 48.9 percent of the total global mobile advertising revenue in 2013 at $9.5bn (€7.1bn), while display approaches parity with a 41.5 percent share at $8bn (€6bn), and messaging takes a 9.6 percent share at $1.9bn (€1.4bn).

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The share by region of the global figure of $19.3m (€14.6m) for 2013 is:

• North America: 41.9% ($8,100m / €6,099m)

• Asia-Pacific: 38.9% ($7,525m / €5,666m)

• Europe: 17.3% ($3,346m / €2,519m)

• Middle East & Africa: 1.2% ($225m / €170m)

• Latin America: 0.7% ($144m / €109m)

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Growth year-over-year was strong across the board, led by Latin America, which saw a massive 215 percent leap over the 2012 figures. North America and Europe also saw major increases:

• Latin America – 215%

• North America – 122%

• Europe – 90%

• Asia-Pacific – 69%

• Middle-East and Africa – 45%

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Definition of Mobile Advertising Formats:

• Display: Any display advertising viewed or read on a mobile phone including rich media and video advertising. This could be browser-based as well as in-app.

• Search: Advertising appearing on specific word requests on search engines, viewed on a mobile device.

• SMS / MMS: 3rd party ads in SMS and outbound SMS only – this includes advertising either within the body copy of an SMS / MMS message, or outbound messaging.

You can review the complete report.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 600 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States.