The head of Opera Mediaworks has said that smartphone and tablet based ads from the social network will win.
According to the chief exec at Opera Mediaworks, Mahi De Silva, who is also a veteran in mobile marketing and advertising, while Google may still be in the lead when it comes to that channel, that position will change next year when it is overtaken by Facebook.
Opera Mediaworks is owned by Opera Software, which is based in Norway and brought in $120 million in revenue last year.
This year, Opera Mediaworks is expected to almost double its revenue. That said, mobile marketing, as a whole, is an industry worth $18 billion as of last year and that is expected to reach $35 billion by the close of this year. It is clear that the company is keeping up with the pace of the industry, but De Silva stated that he is seeking to take on a bigger piece of the market and is considering additional acquisitions, this year, in order to help to achieve that goal.
It is believed that the mobile marketing share in display advertising held by Opera Mediaworks is 17 percent.
The company serves over 65 million mobile ads every month in markets worldwide. The company currently works with nearly 95 percent of the top 100 advertisers on the globe. In a recent interview, De Silva explained that he has predicted that by the year 2016, Facebook will have left Google behind by taking on the top spot in mobile advertising revenue. The reason, he said, was because Google has dropped the ball when it comes to display advertising and because there is currently a consolidation happening within this channel.
He feels that the primary competition for his company is, at the moment, Google, when taking a broader service spectrum into consideration. This is because of their display space overlap. That said, he does not feel that Google will continue to hold that top spot for much longer . When it comes to yearly revenue in that sector, Facebook will be taking over. In fact, he feels that the social network has already grabbed hold of that leading spot in the display market. He said that if they are not the leader in mobile ads overall by next year, it could be in 2016 that this will happen. He feels that in the mobile marketing world, “They are the most interesting company to watch right now.”
