Mobile advertising is set to leave print behind

The marketing industry in the United Kingdom is poised to watch smartphone ads leap ahead of newspapers and magazines.

A new forecast was recently released regarding the future of mobile advertising in the United Kingdom, and it is believed that by next year, the channel will overtake the newspaper and magazine ad market, as well as the spending for TV commercials.

The forecast also predicted that spending on these smartphone and tablet ads will reach £4.5 billion in 2016.

The report was published by eMarketer, which is expecting to see a growth in mobile advertising spending by 96 percent during 2014, to bring it to a total of £2.02 billion. That said, even by the end of this year, it will still be only a sliver behind the forecasted £2.06 that is expected to be spent on print ads in newspapers during the same period of time, said the eMarketer report.

The mobile advertising opportunity in the U.K. is being seen as massive due to the device penetration there.

The report stated that “half of Britons are expected to own an iPad, Kindle, or similar tablet device by 2018”, and with this mobile device usage, it is easy to understand why the ad market over that channel is set to grow by another 60 percent in 2015, to bring it to £3.2 billion in total.

The report went on to say that “Continued robust growth in the mobile channel is driving the bulk of [overall] digital ad growth in the UK.” As both mobile and video ad spending is taking off at an explosive rate, eMarketer feels that this will only drive the ad spending throughout this year and next.

In fact, the complete market for digital advertising in the United Kingdom is expected to be worth £7.25 this year, rising to £7.97 next year, and then to £8.64 by the close of 2016. The report suggested that mobile advertising aimed at smartphone and tablet consumers will make up almost 30 percent of the overall ad spending that occurs in the country, this year. That figure should increase by over half by the end of 2016.