Sunday, July 27, 2014

How Mobile is Taking Over: Evidence from the Worlds of Social, Search…. and Film


Social: Facebook

This week Facebook reported that its revenue more than doubled, due in large part to its mobile advertising, which comprises 62% of its revenue.  Facebook is projected to collect 18% of the US mobile ad market this year with Google at number one in this category projected at about 40%. As a whole, mobile advertising is expected to eclipse ad revenue from newspapers, magazines, and radio for the first time ever in the United States.

Facebook has expanded its advertising efforts through its April 2014 launch of a mobile advertising network. It has now started to gain traction in this area through selling ads on non-Facebook apps and analysts wonder whether or not this trend will bleed into the desktop ad space as well. Many analysts see Facebook’s stronghold in mobile advertising as its competitive advantage against Google and other search-based advertising networks. In June mobile users spent 157 million minutes on Facebook and nearly one-fifth of the world is estimated to log on to Facebook atleast once per month.

Search: Baidu

China’s largest search engine, Baidu, also has experience stronger than expected earnings in the second quarter largely due to mobile. Revenue increased 59% from a year earlier and mobile advertising contributes to 30% of that revenue. Baidu also reports that on some weekends and holidays, search traffic on mobile exceed search traffic from desktop computers. Recently Baidu has been investing heavily in mobile. These investments have included paying mobile phone makers to pre-install its app on phones. In addition to the revenue Baidu earns from search-based advertising, it also earns revenue through an app store which it operates as well as a map-based service.

Film

Smartphone films and shorts are officially an industry. Many argue that the popularity of the smartphone has helped to unlock the creative capacity in many individuals. The emergence of smartphone films is a testament to this trend. Popular smartphone film festivals, such as the Toronto Smartphone Film Festival and the Mobile Film Festival in Paris now exist. Some analysts project the emergence of a new genre of film and new style of moviemaking due to smartphone films. This is certainly one way that mobile (and technology in general) has helped to put creative individuals with good ideas on more equal ground than those with the advantage of access to more capital.

No comments: