GOOGLE DOMINATES MOBILE ADS

Google captured more than half of the USD 8.8 billion spent on mobile Internet advertising worldwide last year and is expected to boost its share in 2013, a market watchers said today. 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 USD 4.6 billion in mobile ad revenues, a figure expected to rise to USD 8.85 billion in 2013. That would bring its market share from 52 per cent in 2012 to 56 per cent this year. Facebook, meanwhile, which had no mobile revenue in 2011, took in USD 470 million and is expected to increase mobile revenues by more than 333 per cent to over USD 2 billion in 2013. That would account for a 12.9 per cent 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 USD 400 million this year, but with its market share slipping slightly to 2.5 per cent. Twitter meanwhile is expected to increase its share to nearly two per cent this year with USD 310 million in revenues. For the overall online advertising market, Google is expected to boost its share to 33.2 per cent from 31.5 per cent last year. Facebook is expected to hold second place and increase its share to five per cent, followed by Yahoo! (3.1 per cent) and Microsoft (1.8 per cent). EU anti-trust authorities have been investigating Google's dominance of online search advertising platforms.