As mobile ads trump desktop, Twitter overtakes Yahoo

The shift toward mobile will benefit Facebook and Twitter, leaving Google and Yahoo behind

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The entire tech world has been making a big shift toward mobile for a while now, so it was inevitable that advertising would eventually have to make the leap as well. The only questions were when that would happen, and who would get lost in the shuffle (Spoiler alert: the answers are "right now" and "Google").

2015 is going to be the year that mobile overtakes desktop in display advertising, according to a new report out from eMarketer on Thursday. 

Mobile display advertising will hit $14.67 billion this year, up from $9.65 billion in 2014. Not only will that allow them to surpass the amount spent on desktop, that number is actually set to fall a little bit in 2015; there will be $12.38 billion spent on desktop display ads, down from $12.56 billion last year.

The biggest driver of mobile display advertising is Facebook. And when I say the biggest driver I mean the biggest driver by far, with nearly $5 billion. Its next closest rival is Google, which will see $1.5 billion in 2015, followed by Twitter with $1.2 billion,

Google has a lot to be worried about in the next few years, as the shift toward mobile is going to hit it harder than any other company.

Facebook’s U.S. mobile ad revenues will grow more than 50% from this year, reaching roughly $7.53 billion, by 2017. At the same time, Twitter will nearly double its US mobile ad revenues to $2.29 billion. Google will still be leading Twitter at that point with $2.4 billion, but not by much.

What this really translates to is Facebook and Twitter taking a larger chunk of the overall display ad market than ever before. 

This year, spending on digital display advertising in the US is expected to total $27.05 billion, with Facebook leading the pack. Its digital display ad revenues in the United States will reach $6.82 billion, for 25.2% of the total market, while Twitter will take 5.0% share, increasing its digital display ad revenues to $1.34 billion. Google will see $3.52 billion, for 13% of the market.

By 2017, US digital display ad expenditure will reach $37.36 billion. Facebook will reach $10 billion, for a 26.9% share, and Twitter will take in $2.54 billion, for 6.8% of the market. That means that, together they will account for over a third, 33.7%, of the total market, up from 30.2% this year.

Google, meanwhile, will have $4.31 billion, down to 11.1% of the market. 

The other company that will take a big hit is Yahoo, which will be surpassed by Twitter for the first time in 2015, and its market share is only going to continue to dwindle by 2017. Yahoo had 7.2% market share in 2013, but by 2017 that will be cut in half to 3.5%.

The one piece of good news for the company, though, is that it is set to see 1% growth this year, and 2% growth for the next two years. This will be the first time that that Yahoo will see any display ad growth growth since at least 2009. So that's something to be happy about, even if it doesn't add up to much.

(Image source: matrixadvertising.net)