Mobile Advertising Projected To Approach $1.5B By 2016

The market for mobile marketing and advertising, still a nascent business, will approach $1.5 billion in 2016, according to ABI Research.

In a report Monday, the market research company said mobile display ad revenue is growing in parallel with the audience for mobile marketing and advertising. The medium experienced growth of 2.5% in one six-month period this year.

The two 800-pound gorillas in the market -- Apple and Google -- are each approaching the market with acquisitions made this year. Apple paid $275 million for Quattro Wireless while Google shelled out $750 million for AdMob.

Government regulators were examining the Google acquisition and approved it after Apple made its acquisition, signaling that the market will be competitive. Apple utilized the Quattro Wireless staff and assets to help built its surviving iAd network. The dynamic mobile advertising market has produced different projections on the size of the market as well as on the size of the mobile shopping market.

"Although the market for mobile advertising and marketing is starting from a very small base, it is showing steady, solid growth," said Neil Strother, ABI practice director, in a statement.

"There was a shift starting at the end of last year from the pioneering phase to what we might call the 'early growth' Phase," he continued. "By now, probably 20% of all major companies have done something with mobile marketing and some of them are doing so repeatedly. Today's mobile campaigns can cost $100,000 or more and annual budgets may run to several million dollars."

In its report, ABI Research segments mobile marketing and advertising into five categories: text messages, mobile display (banner) ads, mobile search, in-application advertising, in-video advertising.

While Apple through its iPhone users and Google through its Android users are dominant in the smartphone category, Symbian handsets lead in mobile phone ad clicks hands-down, according to a report issued earlier this year by Smaato, a service that measures ad clicks.

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