Major US Digital Players shift Revenues to Mobile

Major players in the US digital ad market are shifting more of their revenues to mobile, as consumers in the US spend more time than ever with portable connected devices.

Search is the largest single format when it comes to mobile ad spending, and search giant Google is already garnering nearly one-fifth of its total US ad revenues from mobile search, eMarketer estimates. This year, 19.1% of Google’s ad revenues will come from mobile search, up from 12.3% last year and rising to nearly 31% by 2015.

While search drives much of Google’s mobile monetization, on the display side YouTube is a major reason more mobile dollars are going to Google. Google has moved display dollars to mobile at a similar pace as for search, though display makes up less of Google’s overall ad revenues. This year, eMarketer projects, 3.8% of Google’s net US ad revenues will come from mobile display, vs. 13.8% coming from desktop display ads. By 2015, the mix will be 9.4% mobile display and 16.6% desktop display, more than doubling mobile display’s share of total ad revenues while still growing display dollars on the desktop.

Overall, that means this year Google will take in 22.9% of its net US ad revenues from mobile channels, vs. 77.1% from desktop ads. Both Facebook and Twitter are far more tilted toward mobile in their ad revenue mix.

eMarketer estimates 42.4% of net US Facebook ad revenues will come from mobile this year, only the second year the social networking site has offered mobile ads at all. In 2012, the company aggressively grew its mobile ad revenues to make up 17.9% of the US total, and that share will more than double this year. Next year, eMarketer anticipates, mobile will account for a majority of Facebook’s net US ad revenues.

Twitter is already mostly mobile when it comes to net US ad revenues, and has been since 2012—also the first year the service started selling mobile ads.

Courtesy of eMarketer