• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, December 3, 2012

Mobile advertising will comprise 14% of digital ad spending by 2017, or 4% of all global advertising, projected Magna Global in its year-end forecast. The rapid expansion of mobile advertising will represent a massive increase from the $6 billion that Magna sees this year, a 6% share of digital.

The expansion is part of a general migration of digital advertising toward mobile, paid search and video formats and away from traditional desktop display. But the embrace of mobile is coming from unprecedented increases is consumer usage. Magna EVP and report author Vincent Letang, director of global forecasting, was especially high on larger portable screens. “Tablets have been the fastest device ever to reach 50 million users in less than three years,” he writes. “As they become more affordable, we are seeing an explosion in the volume and nature of mobile media usage." Magna forecasts that overall spending on mobile advertising will hit $24 billion in 2017.