• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, October 4, 2011

Revising its estimates upward for 2011 and onward, eMarketer projects that mobile ad spend for 2011 will total $1.23 billion. The figure reflects all channels of mobile marketing, display, rich media, search, messaging and video.

The spend represents a 65% increase since 2010. eMarketer analyst Noah Elkin says the 2011 ad spend calculation is only slightly higher than the company's previous target, but the forecast for coming years has been revised more substantially.

In 2012, the company is expecting a 47% increase to $1.8 billion, a 40% rise in 2013 to $2.5 billion, another 34% expansion in 2014 to $3.4 billion and a 30% increase in 2015 to $4.4 billion.

"The increased outlook reflects steeper smartphone and tablet adoption over the forecast period," says Elkin. "Simply put, these factors are making the Web more mobile and more of an imperative for marketers."

Over the course of the next several years, eMarketer sees a considerable shift in share of spend among the major channels, however. This year, the research firm pegs messaging with the largest share -- at 36.1% -- but sees it shrinking to a 14.4% piece of the pie by 2015.

Search -- which accounts for 28.5% of spend now -- is set to reach 40.2% by the end of the forecast period, and banners and rich media will rise from a 30.7$ share to 36.4%. The smallest but fastest-growing channel will be video, from 4.7% of mobile ad spend to 9% by 2015. The compound annual growth rate for video will be 69% between 2010 and 2015.