Advanced Television

UK mobile ad revenues to rise 90% in 2013

June 25, 2013

ipadadThe UK mobile advertising market is forecast to almost double in 2013 to £1 billion (€1.17bn), as Google, Facebook and Twitter increasingly successfully ride the smartphone, tablet and app wave.

It is set to grow by 90 per cent year on year, from £526 million in 2012, according to digital ad spend figures published by eMarketer. The growth has been fuelled by British consumers’ love of devices. Britain has the highest smartphone usage in the world and tablets are now commonplace.

Looking ahead, the UK digital ad market will grow to almost £8 billion by 2016, with mobile set to account for £3 billion of that.

It is estimated that Facebook UK will make £279 million in total digital ad revenue this year, a 25 per cent year on year rise. Within this, mobile advertising accounts for potentially up to half of total digital income.

“Major ad platforms have vastly improved mobile ad products to advertisers over the last two years, which has helped drive a redistribution of dollars spent on their platforms from desktop to mobile,” said Clark Fredricksen, vice-president of communications at eMarketer. “Two years ago Facebook and Twitter had no mobile ad business. Today the companies earn between a third and half, respectively, of all revenues from mobile ads”.

Facebook’s £279 million UK digital display ad spend haul is expected to account for almost 20 per cent of the total UK digital display market of £1.5 billion in 2013.

However, the big digital winner remains Google, which eMarketer predicts will make £2.65 billion in search and display digital ad revenue this year.

“Google, similarly, has seen mobile searches rise dramatically thanks to smartphone adoption, and thus the company is seeing more paid search ad clicks than ever before coming through mobile devices,” said Fredericksen.

Google UK is estimated to account for 44 per cent of a total UK digital ad market of £6.1 billion this year, a 12 per cent increase in the size of the market compared with last year.

Categories: Ads, Advertising, Articles, Markets, Mobile, Portable Media, Research