Worldwide Mobile Adspend Reaches USD5.3bn In 2011

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has made its first attempt to gauge the size of the global mobile ad market and has come up with $5.3bn. This is the amount spent on mobile advertising in 2011, with the study covering expenditure on search, display and text messaging.

The initiative was undertaken by the IAB USA Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB Europe and media research group IHS Screen Digest. According to the report, the Asia-Pacific region was responsible for 35.9% of total adspend on mobile, North America came second with 31.4% and Europe followed with 25.9%. Latin America, the Middle East and Africa made very modest contributions, taking respective market shares of 3.5% and 3.2%.

The Asia-Pacific accounted for $1.9bn of global mobile adspend, $1.38bn of which went into search. Display spending amounted to USD491m, while the figure for text messaging was only $41m.

In North America, advertisers poured $1.68bn into mobile marketing initiatives, allocating $811m to search, $572m to display and $295m to text messaging.

Europe’s contribution to the market stood at $1.38bn. Search accounted for $900m of total mobile ad spending, while display and text messaging chalked up $367m and $114m respectively.

Latin America was the only region to have messaging at the top of the spending list. Out of the $188m deployed for mobile advertising, $83m went into text messaging, $74m was spent on search and $31m was dished out on display.

Advertisers in the Middle East and Africa spent a total of $124m on mobile last year. The search bill amounted to $89m, display spending came in at $32m and a mere $3m went into text ads.