Google dominates mobile ads, Facebook rises—survey

Google captured more than half of the $8.8 billion spent on mobile Internet advertising worldwide last year and is expected to boost its share in 2013, a market watchers said Thursday, June 13, 2013. AP PHOTO/PAUL SAKUMA

WASHINGTON—Google captured more than half of the $8.8 billion spent on mobile Internet advertising worldwide last year and is expected to boost its share in 2013, a market watcher said Thursday.

Google also took in one-third of all digital ad dollars spent globally, according to eMarketer, in its first figures on worldwide digital and mobile advertising at major Internet companies.

The eMarketer figures showed Google had $4.6 billion in mobile ad revenues, a figure expected to rise to $8.85 billion in 2013. That would bring its market share from 52 percent in 2012 to 56 percent this year.

Facebook, meanwhile, which had no mobile revenue in 2011, took in $470 million and is expected to increase mobile revenues by more than 333 percent to over $2 billion in 2013.

That would account for a 12.9 percent share of the global online mobile advertising market, eMarketer said.

Among the others in the mobile ad sector is online music group Pandora, which is expected to see revenues jump to $400 million this year, but with its market share slipping slightly to 2.5 percent.

Twitter, meanwhile, is expected to increase its share to nearly two percent this year with $310 million in revenues.

For the overall online advertising market, Google is expected to boost its share to 33.2 percent from 31.5 percent last year. Facebook is expected to hold second place and increase its share to five percent, followed by Yahoo! (3.1 percent) and Microsoft (1.8 percent).

EU anti-trust authorities have been investigating Google’s dominance of online search advertising platforms.