Facebook catching up on mobile advertising

Google management will be looking over its shoulder at Facebook when it comes to mobile advertising this year; the company may be poised to capture the lion’s share of mobile advertising, but despite a slow start Facebook is growing faster.

New numbers from research company eMarketer show that Facebook is set to capture 15.8 percent of the mobile advertising market this year, up from 5.35 percent last year. Prior to 2012 Facebook did not generate any revenue from mobile advertising.

But in Q2-2013 Facebook reported that total advertising revenues were $1.6 billion, 41 percent of which came from mobile.

By comparison, Google expects to control 53.17 percent of the $16.65 mobile advertising market this year, up from 52.36 percent in 2012.

Facebook currently has 1.15 billion users, with 819 million monthly active users (MAUs) coming from mobile, says eMarketer, which lists the top five for mobile advertising market share as:

Google 53.17 percent
Facebook 15.8 percent
Pandora 2.37 percent
YP (Yellow Pages) 2.27 percent
Twitter 1.85 percent.

Looking at the digital advertising sector in the round, Google continues to dominate with 32.84 percent of the market, but Facebook is chasing with 5.41 percent. Yahoo! is third, though e-Marketer expects it to lose market share from last year, down 40 basis points to end the year with 2.97 percent of the market.