Research shows that mobile advertising in the UK will reach close to £1bn this year, as advertisers continue to invest heavily in mobile search and display formats to address a multi-screen audience. The latest report on advertising spending from eMarketer suggests mobile advertising in the UK will rise to £999m in 2013, up 90% from £526m spent last year, reaching 16.5% of the total digital ad spend.
Mobile advertising growth is expected to accelerate over the next four years, hitting £1.6bn in 2014, £2.3bn in 2015, £3bn in 2016 and £3.7bn in 2017, by which time it will represent 44.4% of the UK’s £8bn forecast digital ad spend.
In 2016, search advertising will account for more than half of all digital ad investments including online and mobile, although display ad spending, which will total one-quarter of all digital ad expenditure this year, is expected to grow rapidly due to massive increases in video advertising.
The report from eMarketer found that search will hit £3.6bn this year, up 12.8% on £3.2bn in 2012, and reach £4.5bn by 2017; meanwhile, the display will rise 14.9% to £1.5bn this year (2012: £1.3bn) and hit £2.7bn by 2017.
The average UK digital ad spends per Internet user this year is forecast to be £127, which is more than four times the global average and higher than the amount spent by advertisers in the US.
Total media ad spend is predicted to reach nearly £14bn this year, a rise of 3.7% on 2012 thanks to substantial gains in online and mobile ad investments. Of this, digital will be the biggest segment contributing £6.1bn, followed by TV (£3.6bn), print (£3.2bn), outdoor (£981m) and radio (£332m).
According to eMarketer’s forecast, digital will surpass all other forms of advertising combined in 2016, when digital ad spend is expected to generate £7.9bn versus TV, print, outdoor and radio’s combined total of £7.8bn.