Mobile advertising is set to benefit from a new main investor, as the UK races ahead of the US in terms of money dedicated to the channel.
Figures provided by eMarketer show that companies in the US will continue to spend more on mobile than their British counterparts up until 2014. It is believed that 33.8% of all digital ad spend in the US during this year will be assigned to mobile, which is higher than the UK total of 27.9%.
The tables will then turn, as a flock of new investors in the UK allow mobile to account for 70.4% of their nation’s digital ad spend in 2018, above the US on 67.8%.
Researchers from eMarketer have partly attributed the growth to a heightened demand for mobile-centric ad products across social networks. Both Facebook and Twitter have made no secret of their intentions to focus more on driving revenue from smartphones and tablets over the coming years.
UK provides value
Although the UK is set to become the biggest mobile ad investor in the world, unlike its competing nations, the overall contribution will take into account budgets for highly direct platforms such as SMS, MMS and peer-to-peer messaging.
British companies will also be reluctant to invest too heavily in mobile before 2014 has drawn to a close, but they should have few objections to putting money into digital as a whole.
While companies in the US will be forced to pay out an average $564.84 (£330.69) to communicate with each of their consumers in 2014, UK firms are only faced with a bill of $366.68 (£214.68) per capita.
The difference in value will remain for at least the next four years, when the prices for reaching US and UK consumers hit $670.65 (£392.61) and $414.97 (£242.95) respectively.
Meanwhile India will remain the cheapest place to connect with an audience, its ‘cost-per-consumer’ rising from just $5.10 (£2.98) to $6.26 (£3.66) between 2014-2018.