• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 25, 2013

There’s not much dispute Google is the market leader when it comes to mobile advertising. But who’s No. 2? Local advertising giant YP today issued a release calling itself the second biggest player in U.S. mobile advertising, with revenue of $350 million attributable to mobile last year. It cited a report from IDC last month.

An eMarketer forecast in December had Facebook second behind Google, with an estimated $339 million in U.S. mobile advertising. The social network may have exceeded that projection, doubling mobile ad sales overall in the fourth quarter to $306 million from about $150 million in the third quarter.

Pandora, Twitter, Apple and Millennial Media were among other top ad companies in U.S. mobile ad revenue in 2012 listed by eMarketer, but not YP. eMarketer spokesman Clark Fredrickson said the research firm had contacted YP for its forecast but wasn’t able to get a clear sense of its mobile ad revenue, excluding payments made to partners. It also didn’t have enough reliable third-party data to include in its mobile ad estimate.

The YP announcement quotes IDC analyst Karsten Weide as saying the company, formerly AT&T Yellow Pages, has “firmly established itself as the number two company in the U.S. mobile advertising market.” But IDC hasn’t released its full mobile ad report publicly.

YP said had nearly $1 billion in total digital revenue last year, making it the second largest locally-based online ad company next to Autotrader.com, according to Borrell Associates.

YP said mobile searches accounted for 40% of all searches across its properties last year, highlighting its mobile shift. It reaches 50 million consumers monthly and its Local Ad Network has expanded to more than 300 online and mobile publishers.