Mobile Ad Revenues to Reach $4 Billion by 2015

Hot on the trail of a forecast for 2013 comes a new report predicting the fate of the mobile-ad market for the coming years and this one goes out on a limb and offers numbers for 2015. The ad market is expected to grow to as much as $4.2 billion in the US by 2015, up from just $1.3 billion in 2010. The trend coincides with previous reports and with the general belief that mobile ads will see a huge increase in the coming years thanks to the prevalence of smartphones.

The Coda Research Consultancy research firm has come out with the new report, breaking down the market in search ads, which are set for a huge increase, display ads and SMS ads. The market is expected to increase roughly three times, thanks in large part to the increase in mobile Internet use. In fact, by 2015, 70 percent of the revenue will come from search ads generating slightly above $3 billion by that time. Search-ad revenue is at 371 million per year today, but it will double in 2010 and spending will continue on an ascending trend.

Display ads will also take a bigger share of the market, despite being less suited for mobile phones because of the small screens. Display-ad spending is expected to grow six times in the next five years, from about 200 million today to roughly 1.2 billion in 2015. The big losers, though, will be SMS ads, which now dominate the market.

Revenue from SMS ads will grow in the next few years, along with the market as a whole, but will begin to drop dramatically after 2012 and will take up a very small slice of the market by 2015. This is pretty much in tune with the previous report, which claimed search ads would make up 73 percent of the ad market by 2013, followed by display ads, with just 18 percent. SMS also loses out, with just nine percent of the market by that time.