A new report from Pyramid Research says location-based advertising is becoming increasingly popular. In 2008, the location-based advertising market was worth just $86 million worldwide, representing 10% of all mobile advertising. Last year, it had increased to $588 million - 18.5% of all mobile advertising - and by 2015 it’s expected to reach $6.2 billion (£3.8 billion).
When that happens, almost 35% of all mobile advertising revenue will be coming from location-based advertising - or, from another perspective, more than 60% of all location-based service revenue would be coming from mobile ads.
Jan ten Sythoff, analyst at large for Pyramid Research, said “The different components of mobile advertising (including search, display and messaging) are all growing. However, local search will be the most important driver of location-based advertising revenues. Not only are navigation applications moving to a search-funded model, but there are also a wide range of other companies looking to capitalize on the growth of local search, including start-ups (such as Poynt and Yelp), local business advertising specialists (such as Yellow Pages) and vertical aggregators (such as toptable and HotelBooker).”
North America is the largest region throughout the forecast period due to high GPS penetration of handsets.
[Report summary]