Kenshoo: Mobile ad revenue now accounts for a large portion of Facebook's global ad revenue

Facebook charges more for mobile ad clicks

From both the user and advertiser perspectives, Facebook's strong push into mobile in 2012 was impressive. Prior to this, Facebook had been criticized for lagging behind in the mobile field. However, Facebook's transformation was so fast that within a year, it was able to have a significant impact on global social network advertising revenue.

Kenshoo Social (digital software marketing company) analyzed the advertising configuration of its own clients and found that commercial organizations in different verticals around the world (including retail, financial services, entertainment and travel) allocate nearly 1/5 of their advertising spending on Facebook to mobile advertising.

Further breaking down mobile ad spending reveals that, in the smartphone space, Android has undoubtedly won the most ad spending, accounting for 71%; while in the tablet space, iOS has taken up almost all of Facebook’s mobile ad spending. The statistical results are consistent with the fact that Android dominates the smartphone market, while Apple’s iPad leads the tablet market.

Overall, mobile display ads have a higher user engagement rate. Facebook positions its mobile ads as a high-end ad product: the cost per click on mobile ads is $1.38, while desktop ads are only 81 cents. This also reflects that Facebook's ad products have obtained high-quality resources from Facebook's previous vigorous mobile promotion.

Research firm Cowen predicted in January that Facebook's global advertising revenue would reach $6 billion in 2013, of which $1.7 billion would come from mobile (a slightly smaller share of mobile revenue than Kenshoo's earlier forecast). eMarketer's forecast is slightly more conservative than Cowen's, predicting Facebook's advertising revenue will be $5.54 billion.

Cowen predicts that by 2016, the gap between Facebook's mobile ad revenue and desktop ad revenue will be just $1.1 billion.

199it original compilation and analysis @eMarketer