Report: Google Continues to Dominate Mobile Ad Biz

A new report from eMarketer reveals that Google accounts for more than 50 percent of the mobile advertising market. It also dominates in online Web ads seen from PCs.

Robert Hof with Forbes reported, “No surprise, Google currently dominates mobile advertising worldwide, with a 56% market share expected this year, just over half the nearly $16 billion in total mobile ad revenues. That’s thanks to its even greater dominance in mobile search ads, with more than 80% market share (in the U.S., at least). Search ads themselves are over half the mobile ad market. But Facebook is rising fast, growing mobile ad revenues more than 333% this year, to a little over $2 billion, to capture almost 13% of the market.”

Jessica Guynn with the Los Angeles Times added, “EMarketer also forecast that Google’s total take of the digital ad market including personal computers would reach nearly $39 billion, a 19% jump from last year and one-third of the nearly $117-billion market. Facebook comes in second with 5% of the market. Yahoo is third with 3%, according to the EMarketer forecast.”

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Brian Womack noted, “While Google has bolstered revenue by selling marketers space on its main Web-search business for desktop computers, the company has stepped up efforts to expand advertising on tablets and smartphones as well as through YouTube, its video-sharing service. YouTube tripled ad sales on mobile devices in the past half-year, the company said this month.”

In related news, Engadget’s Sarah Silbert noted that Facebook is tweaking its advertising strategy: “Facebook ads are about to become a tiny bit less obtrusive: the social network just announced that it will stop showing Sponsored Results this July.”