Today’s mobile ad forecast from Informa is interesting for all sorts of reasons. If you’re a glass half empty sort of person, you might say it’s only a fraction of the $11.35bn the analyst firm thought the mobile ad market would be worth by 2011. If you’re a realist though, you might say that a prediction of what a market is going to be worth in a couple of months’ as opposed to five years’ time, is likely to be a good deal more accurate.
But given how out that $11.35bn by 2011 forecast was (though Informa might argue there’s still a year to get there), how confident should we be in the other forecast in today’s report, that the market will be worth $24bn by 2015?
These things are always, at best, an educated guess, but I think it’s fair to say there’s a good chance that figure will prove to be a lot more accurate than the $11.35bn one. Why? Well four years ago when Informa came up with that forecast, Apple’s involvement in the mobile market was still a moot point. The first iPhone did not appear until a year later. As indeed was Google’s from memory, though I’m happy to be corrected on that point.
As Informa notes today, the big brands were only just starting to dip their toes in the water. Now, you need look no further than the video interviews with Coca-Cola and Unilever on this very site to see how their attitude towards mobile has moved on.
Four years ago, most mobile operators, with the exception of Turkcell, barely knew what mobile advertising was. Today, as Informa notes once again, they are clamouring to get a slice of the action, and with Informa predicting that their share of the revenues will fall over the next five years, they need to. 
When you’ve been covering the mobile scene for a while – it’s our 5th birthday next month – it’s tempting to think of it as a mature market. That $24bn stat just reminds me that we ain’t seen nothing yet, and the next five years are going to be a hotbed of activity, new ideas, mergers and acquisitions, and everything else that goes hand in hand with a rapidly-growing market. Should be a lot of fun covering it.
David Murphy
Editor
