The report predicts that Twitter will earn nearly $130m in U.S. mobile advertising revenues in 2012 alone with Facebook trailing behind with only $73m.
"Both companies earn far less mobile revenue than companies with more established mobile ad platforms like Google and Pandora, though growth in mobile revenues at both social networks is expected to remain high throughout the forecast period," said eMarketer.
The overall US mobile advertising market is expected to grow to $2.6bn this year due to the increased mobile offering by Facebook, Twitter and other digital platforms.
The market is predicted to even reach $12bn by 2016.
Emarketer says that Twitter’s success in shifting toward mobile advertisements has been made easier by Twitter’s promoted tweets and core user experience. Twitter generates more ad revenues on mobile than it does on its website.
Facebook is still struggling to come to the top as it only rolled out premium ads for mobile and desktop earlier this year. The social network still earns more revenue from its desktop ads than its mobile ads. Some ads displayed on desktops are not even shown on Facebook’s mobile platform.
Yet, eMarketer predicts that Facebook will not stay down for long. Facebook is predicted to beat Twitter in mobile ads by next year, taking a hefty piece of the US mobile ad pie with $387m in revenues. Facebook mobile ad revenues are then expected to jump to $629.4m by 2014 with Twitter generating $444m.
It is yet to be seen if eMarketer’s predictions will prove to be true. Facebook has publically admitted to having a weak mobile platform. More than half of its users access the site through mobile and the social network still does mobile advertising experience is relatively weak compared to its desktop advertising experience.
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