• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, January 12, 2016

One of the takeaways for the ad business from the just-finished CES is that the mobile screen will continue to gain share in 2016. Already, consumers rely on their handhelds for, well, nearly everything. And video is part of that everything.

Consider some of these recent findings:

About 30% of smartphone owners in North America watch full-length TV shows on their phones, while 20% watch full-length movies, according to a new Ooyala state of the industry report. As such, mobile video ad spend will continue to thrive in 2016.

As a whole, mobile ad revenue is slated to rise by an annual compound growth rate of 26.5% through 2020, with U.S. digital video ad revenue is growing at 21.9% through that same time frame, according to BI Intelligence figures.

As over-the-top continues to spread in 2016, many consumers will watch such content via TV, but the majority will use mobile devices. About 66% of global consumers watch paid over-the-top programming on a mobile, tablet or laptop, according to a ResearchNow study commissioned by Paywizard.

That’s due in part to the prevalence of OTT usage among millenials, since the 18- to 34-year-old audience tends to favor mobile devices, the study found. In the U.S., that demographic uses three times as many devices to access TV content, Paywizard said. The study surveyed consumers in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, the U.K. and U.S. on their TV habits December 2015.

Also, 78% of the U.S. population now subscribes to at least one streaming VOD service, according to Ooyala. That last fact seems to underscore the ubiquity of not just OTT services, but also consumer choice  -- and many are choosing their phones as a way to access VOD streams.