Mobile advertising spending to overtake TV ad spend this year

Mobile App Spending - Man with Phone

A new report showed that marketers are continuing to shift toward smartphones and away from television.

We all knew that mobile advertising spending would one day beat out the TV spend, but eMarketer predicts that it will happen this year. The digital marketing firm released the results of recent research it conducted in the United States.

Ad companies are increasingly directing their budgets toward smaller screens and that trend is growing.

The eMarketer research indicated that mobile advertising spending would represent 33.9 percent of all media spend on ads in the United States this year. On the other hand, TV ad spending will comprise a slightly lower 31.6 percent share.

The total ad spend in the United States will top $220.96 billion in 2018, says eMarketer. This means that marketers will pour $69.87 billion into television advertising. That represents a healthy increase of $6.6 billion in ad spending overall. However, it also means that television will experience a 0.5 percent dip in ad spending.

eMarketer predicts that mobile advertising spending will represent almost half of the market by 2022.

The firm’s researchers said that by 2022, mobile ad spend will represent 47.9 percent of all media advertising. In that same year, TV’s share of mobile advertising will have fallen to 24.8 percent.

According to Cory McNair, an eMarketer analyst, “Advertisers are pouring dollars into mobile due to growing mobile commerce activity. Conversions from mobile display ad placements have already surpassed those of desktop.” He added that over one quarter of all digital ad revenues (27.9 percent) brought in during 2018 will go to Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Facebook.

eMarketer expects Google to draw $39.92 billion in ad revenue this year. That represents a 14.5 percent growth rate when compared to 2017. Facebook should take in $21 billion. The social media giant’s growth rate will be even greater, at 16.9 percent.

eMarketer has taken that growth rate to predict that next year, Google and Facebook’s ad revenues one their own will be greater than all American Television ad revenues. A considerable and growing proportion of that digital ad spend will belong to mobile advertising spending.

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