Dubai: After all the supercharged growth rates in recent years, global mobile-based web advertising looks all set to move past those in newspapers for the first time in 2016. As and when this happens, mobile internet will take reins as the third-largest advertising medium and behind television and desktop-based web ads, based on number crunching done in ZenithOptimedia’s latest ‘Advertising Expenditure Forecasts’.

‘We predict [global] newspaper ad spend will shrink by an average of 4.9 per cent a year through to 2017, while magazine advertising will shrink by 3.2 per cent a year,’ states the report. ‘Their combined share of global ad spend has fallen from 39.4 per cent in 2007 to 19.6 per cent this year, and we expect it to fall further to 16.7 per cent by 2017.’

Meanwhile, ‘mobile internet advertising’s share of the global ad market will rise from 5.7 per cent in 2014 to 15 per cent in 2017. Overall, internet advertising will account for 34 per cent of global ad spend in 2017, slightly behind television’s 35.9 per cent. The market share gap between the two media will narrow from 13.3 percentage points in 2014 to 1.9 in 2017. At this rate of growth, internet advertising will overtake television in 2018.’

Mobile-based ads will, by next year, represent 12.4 per cent of global ad spend, with newspapers following with 11.9 per cent. ‘Mobile advertising remains the driving force behind the growth of the entire advertising market, contributing 83 per cent of all new ad dollars between 2014 and 2017,’ the report adds.

It will, based on these estimates ‘grow 38 per cent in 2016 to $71 billion [260.6 billion], while newspaper advertising will shrink 4 per cent to $68 billion.’

“Mobile technology... is disrupting business models across all industries,” said Steve King, ZenithOptimedia’s CEO, Worldwide. “We are now witnessing the fastest transition of ad budgets in history as marketers and agencies scramble to catch up with consumers’ embrace of the mobile way of life.”

As for desktop internet advertising, despite mobile’s inroads, it looks likely to grow ‘but will lose market share for the first time this year, dropping from 19.8 per cent of global ad spend in 2014 to 19.4 per cent.’

For the full year, ZenithOptimedia’s projections are for global ad spend to grow 4 per cent to $554 billion this year, ‘and accelerate to 5 per cent growth in 2016, boosted by the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and the US Presidential elections.

‘Adspend will then slow down slightly in the absence of these events, growing 4.4 per cent in 2017.’