IT market research company eMarketer has said that advertisers are expected to spend nearly $1.23bn on mobile advertising this year in the US, up from $743m last year and set to reach almost $4.4bn by 2015.
The advertising revenue includes spending on display ads (such as banners, rich media and video), search and messaging-based advertising, and covers ads viewed on both mobile phones and tablets.
eMarketer has estimated that by the end of this year, 38% of US mobile users will have a smartphone and 41% will use the mobile Internet at least once each month.
The company said that this year, messaging-based formats still take the largest piece of the pie, accounting for $442.6m in spending. But in 2012, banners and rich media will be even with search, each getting 33% of spending, or $594.8m. Emarketer said that will put them ahead of messaging, which will fall to just 28.2% of all mobile ad spending next year.
By 2015, banners and rich media and search will dominate further, and messaging will have shrunk to 14.4% of the total, said eMarketer.
The company said that video is the fastest-growing mobile ad format, but form the smallest base.
Mobile video ad spending, at $57.6m this year, will grow at a compound annual rate of 69% between 2010 and 2015 to reach $395.6m, said eMarketer.
