An advanced peek at the forthcoming BIA/Kelsey “U.S. Local Media Forecast 2015 Update,” April 2015, reveals that mobile advertising is projected to grow into the fourth largest local media platform by the year 2019. In fact, the research firm BIA/Kelsey predicts that location targeted mobile advertising revenues in the United States are likely to grow from the $6.7 billion projected for this year to $18.2 billion in 2019, which translates to a 28.5 percent compound annual growth rate.

Furthermore, the forecast indicates that it’s mobile that is driving most of the current changes in the digital media space. More and more, mobile is gaining traction with advertisers in practically every industry, and it’s predicted that mobile will grow up to an 11.5 percentage share of the total local media space by 2019. This places mobile directly behind direct mail (predicted to retain a 23.6 percent share in 2019), over the air television advertising (with a 13.7 percent predicted share) and pure play online (at a 12.9 percent predicted share).

In the growth of advertising spaces, according to the forecast mobile is expected to outpace online spending significantly. Mark Fratrik, SVP and Chief Economist at BIA/Kelsey, explains that this is because while online spending is currently growing through ads viewed on desktops, general online ad unit pricing faces imminent challenges as consumers are turning more and more away from the desktop experience and toward their mobile devices. This means that the attention of advertisers is turning toward mobile as well, which is a main reason why online advertising is expected to gain only a few points of the local advertising market share in contrast to mobile advertising, which is expected to nearly triple its share within the same time frame.

BIA/Kelsey has indicated that it plans to focus on the impact of mobile technologies on the local media marketplace at its upcoming BIA/Kelsey NOW conference, scheduled for Jun 2015 in San Francisco. The overarching theme of the conference involves a close examination of the emerging local on-demand economy.

Reference:

Essany, Michael. “Mobile Will Be Livin’ La Vida Local by Decade’s End.” Mobile Marketing Watch. 4/23/15.