Global mobile ad spend statistics: Significant regional differences exist

As mobile continues to gain traction, so does the need for marketers to obtain reliable insights into the medium. In a direct response to this, prominent digital advertising bodies have joined forces to size the global mobile advertising market.

Global totals (as can be seen below) are broken down into ad spending by region and show outspoken differences. Considering the vast amount of connected mobile devices in the APAC region, it is not necessarily surprising that it leads overall mobile ad spend, followed by North America and Europe.

At the bottom end, accounting for just 6.7% of the global mobile ad spend collectively, Latin America and Middle East/Africa severely lag behind the markets mentioned above. With mobile in many cases being the only access point people have to the internet in emerging markets – mobile broadband connections far outnumber that of desktop – it is noteworthy how few marketers are actually tapping in to the significant potential of using this channel to reach consumers.

Source: IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence (US); IAB Europe; IHS Screen Digest

When comparing advertising investments according to format, some rather interesting fluctuations exist. While search accounts for almost 62% of the total global mobile ad spend, North American advertisers allocate slightly under half of their mobile budget to search, compared to 65% and 72% in Europe and Asia-Pacific, respectively. Search is still the preferred mobile advertising format in North America, however, marketers in this region skew more towards display and messaging than their European and Asian counterparts.

Unfortunately, the bodies behind the research do not comment on the varying mobile budget allocation between the regions (at least in the article I have come across). What do you think might be causing this? Add your comment below.

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Immanuel Simonsen

Research Manager at Webcertain

As the Research Manager of multilingual web marketing agency Webcertain, Immanuel heads up the company’s global market research activities and large content marketing projects. He is the author of several reports and guides, including ‘The Essential Guide to Rel-Alternate-Hreflang’ and ‘The Webcertain Global Search and Social Report 2013’. Apart from being a tutor at the International Marketing School -- teaching online marketing professionals on business opportunities around the globe -- Immanuel is a regular speaker at the International Search Summit, a leading event series dedicated to multilingual search and social media marketing.

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