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Facebook Moves Up In Mobile Ads But Google Still Rules

This article is more than 10 years old.

It's no secret by now that Facebook has managed to make a lot of money on ads shown on mobile devices. Today, we get a closer glimpse of just how much its mobile ad revenues are growing.

Facebook's revenues from ads shown on smartphones and tablets are set to triple this year to more than $2.6 billion, or nearly 16% of overall mobile ad revenues, according to a new report from eMarketer. The research firm forecasts that mobile ad revenues overall will jump 89% this year, to $16.65 billion

The Facebook numbers track, not surprisingly, with Facebook's own. It reported second-quarter mobile ad revenues of $656 million, or 41% of its overall ad sales. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the second-quarter conference call that he expected mobile ads to produce the majority of Facebook's ad revenues before long.

The rapid growth in mobile ad revenues is a key reason why investors have become more confident in Facebook, whose shares recently closed above $40 a share for the first time. That's also a bit above the company's initial public offering price. In morning trading today, the shares were up almost 3% to a little under $41.

As a result of the mobile surge, eMarketer expects Facebook to gross $6.36 billion overall this year, up from a previous forecast of $5.89 billion.

For all that, Facebook still trails far behind Google , whose search ads rule the mobile roost for now. Its share is expected to rise less than one percentage point this year, to about 53%. One new source of growth likely will be mobile ads on YouTube.

Online radio service Pandora trails with a little over 2% share, followed by YP (Yellow Pages), Twitter, and mobile ad network Millennial Media . The big losers: the "other" category. EMarketer tells me that includes the likes of Weather Co. as well as networks across Asia, Russia and Latin America such as Baidu and InMobi.