A recent report from Zenith, the media research company, forecasts that mobile will overtake desktop to become the primary internet advertising medium in 2017, a year earlier than previously predicted.
According to Zenith, advertisers worldwide will spend £74.1bn on mobile advertising in 2017, compared to £72.5bn on desktop.
Ban the banner
But the interesting thing here is that most of us are fed up of looking at traditional banner ads (or display ads), especially on our smartphone.
Traditional display ad revenues will actually fall this year, by about 3%, a big turnaround from 8.6% growth last year, according to Zenith.
Valuable screen space
A major reason for this is smartphones. Most of us already hated banner ads on desktop, but on a smartphone's valuable screen space they're even more annoying, obscuring apps, games and news feeds.
Despite this, mobile ad revenues grew by 95% last year. This year’s expected 46% growth, to £58 billion, is still pretty high. By 2018, Zenith predict, mobile ad revenues will rise to almost £96 billion, moving ever nearer to television ad revenues, forecast at £143 billion.
Video & social
With display ads on the wane, this growth is being fuelled by other types of advert. Mobile users don’t mind watching video ads and 'native ads' that run on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and other social networks.
Video advertising revenue is expected to grow about 20% a year between 2016 and 2018. Social media ads will do even better, increasing almost 24%, according to Zenith.
But rather than seeing banner ads dismissed entirely, we’d like to see them evolve, optimised specifically for mobile browsing, and capable of displaying interactive video content. One for the future - keep your eyes on Google!
Targeted & engaging
The trend is clear. Mobile is increasingly the place to reach consumers. To do so, ads must be well targeted, as enabled by sophisticated social platform demographics, and based around appealing, entertaining or even useful content, such as videos and articles.
Our marketing team at Webreality specialise in creating quality content and targeted campaigns. To find out how you can reach your audience with effective and engaging online ads and content, please get in touch with Mark Evans.