Mobile Ads continues to dominate

The Pew Research Center released its annual State of the News Media reports dominated by Facebook, Snapchat and other social platforms by way of conversations around journalism over the past year, and examines these trends and shows that digital technology continues to upend the news industry. Half of all American adults now get news from Facebook, Pew found. Daily newspaper’s circulation fell by 7 per cent between 2014 to 2015 and newspaper revenue also fell 8 per cent over the same period.

Spending on Mobile advertising grew by 65 per cent and in 2015, £24.65 billion $31.6billion, or 53  per cent of total digital advertising was spent on mobile ads. According to the report, the mobile ads accounted for 17 per cent of the £142.74 billion, $183 billion that was spent in media advertising on all platforms in 2015.

Video advertising spending climbed 46 per cent to £6 billion, $7.7 billion in 2015, a mere 29 per cent of display advertising.

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Twitter amassed 65 per cent of the £46.49 billion, $59.6 billion that was spent on digital advertising in 2015 ( Up from 61 per cent in 2014). Facebook alone accounted for 30 per cent £ 6.24 billion, $8 billion, of display ad revenue up from 25 per cent in 2014.

An increase in data suggests the impact these technological companies having on the business of journalism goes far beyond the financial side, to the very inner core of the news industry.

Downloads of NPR’s core news apps on Android, iPhone and iPad apps all fell in 2014, but NPR One was downloaded 371, 000 times on Android and 283, 000 times on iPhone in 2015.

India is considered as the world’s second largest market in Asia Pacific for smartphone users and according to 2020 researchers over 600 million Indians are accessing the internet over mobile devices.  Increased penetration and falling data prices, along with the advent of 4G have fuelled growth opportunities for marketers in the Indian mobile advertising sector. According to another researcher eMarketer, mobile advertising is on its way to reach a  £ 273 billion, $350 billion markets for the first time in 2016, up from a mere £20.28 billion, $26 billion in 2013.

According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, out of 354 million internet users in India, 213 million are mobile-only users and this has led e-commerce companies to focus on a mobile only strategy and is now turning into m-commerce entities.

According to 2015 Ericsson Mobility Report, mobile video is forecast to grow by 55 per cent annually through 2020, as it accounts for 60 per cent of all mobile data traffic.  Mobile apps like Star India’s Hotstar are popular among audiences, having reached 10 million downloads in just 40 days since its launch according to a research paper in the International Journal of Science, Technology and management. With more people opting for their smartphones to watch videos, advertisers are beginning to recognise the advertising potentials that mobile video ads can offer, backed with better retention and increased levels of engagement.