• Bloomberg Businessweek, Monday, October 4, 2010 12:21 AM

Marketers such as Unilever, which is now using iAd to promote Skippy peanut butter, Ragu pasta sauce, and other brands, have helped give Apple CEO Steve Jobs' first foray into advertising a good start. By the end of this year, iAd will pull even with Google and account for 21% the U.S. mobile advertising market, according to a forecast by IDC. The market research firm says that Google, the current market leader, will see its share drop from 27% to 21%.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will sink into the single digits, according to IDC's projections. None of the mobile ad networks report sales figures. Google says IDC under counts its share, and that its mobile ad sales are rising quickly. IDC expects the U.S. mobile ad market to grow by 126% this year, to $500 million. By comparison, the online ad market is much larger at $25 billion, but growing at a rate of 11% in 2001, according to eMarketer.

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