Fifty-two percent of the global population – 3.9bn people – access the internet via a mobile phone, and advertisers spent an estimated $137.9bn to reach them last year, or $35.36 per user.
Data from WARC’s 12 key markets, which between them account for some three-quarters of global adspend (and 91.1% of all mobile spend – $125.6bn), show that mobile is the second-largest ad medium, and could overtake TV this year if current growth rates are maintained.
Of the 800 practitioners surveyed for WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit, 71% expected a rise in mobile budgets this year, with most money going to Google- and Facebook-owned platforms.
Nearly all of Facebook’s 1.5bn daily users access the platform via a mobile – equivalent to one in five people worldwide – and the company’s ad revenues exceeded $50bn last year.
Google’s ad revenues topped $100bn for the first time last year. The company accredits much of its recent growth to rising income from mobile search, while mobile devices already account for over 70% of all YouTube viewing.
This Data Point was drawn from January's Global Ad Trends report, which focuses on investment and consumption trends within mobile advertising, in addition to ad performance, measurability and data privacy concerns.