Mobile advertising is a hot market right now. Evidenced most recently by the IPO of mobile advertising network Millennial and Singtel’s $321m acquisition of Amobee. Mary Meeker just released her annual 100+ page slide deck of internet trends, and three of those show why everyone is so excited about mobile advertising.
1. Mobile traffic is growing fast, now up to 10% of all internet traffic.
2. An increasing percentage of that traffic has purchase intent – m-commerce now up 8% of e-commerce in the US
3. Mobile ad spend is lagging way behind mobile media consumption, and the desktop internet proved that over time Ad$ follow eyeballs
On the desktop web ad spend started catching up with time spent in media when the ad formats started working – key drivers were broadband penetration (life was too short to click on ads over dial-up), emergence of search advertising, and then better targeting and more creative display ads. I have every confidence that similar drivers will see the mobile ad spend start to catch up with mobile media consumption over the next 3-5 years.
