Mobile second-largest ad medium after TV

The latest monthly Global Ad Trends report anticipated that mobile ad spend will grow by 35.2% year-on-year to $98.3bn in 2017.

TV is still the dominant medium for spend, at around $139bn, and is expected to remain so in 2018.

Mobile display expenditure is expected to reach $45.2bn this year within the 12 markets studied by WARC – Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US. The US, China and the UK have the largest mobile ad spend of markets analysed.

The duopoly of Facebook and Google has contributed to the rise in spend on mobile, with the two accounting for 61% of all online ad spend in 2017, increasing from 58% in 2016 and 47% in 2012. Mobile is expected to represent 88% of Facebook’s ad revenue for 2017 ($34bn). 

The study also found that the combined revenue from the two is expected to equate to a quarter of all adspend worldwide this year, up from a fifth in 2016 and 9.4% in 2012.

James McDonald, data editor at WARC, said: "Daily mobile time has more than doubled over the last five years, and our research demonstrates how marketers are looking to capitalise on this by investing more in social, video and native mobile formats over the coming years. Much of this influx has been to the benefit of the duopoly – Facebook and Google – where one in four dollars of global advertising is now spent."