Commentary

Mobile-First World To Be Fueled By Collapse In Desktop Search

Mobile is moving from strength to strength -- not only causing marketers to consider how they respond to the channel more than doubling in value between 2015 and 2020, but also wondering where they and others are pulling budget from to be part of the mobile revolution. The answer is simple. As mobile budgets surge, desktop display is flatlining, and desktop search is nosediving.

This is according to eMarketer, whose latest figures suggest we have just come through the year where digital sneaked over the 50% of all advertising mark and now we're in the year where -- for the first time -- the biggest channel is mobile. Mobile accounts for a little over half of all digital advertising spending -- but crucially, is set to account for just over one in every four pounds spent on advertising in the UK this year and one in every three pounds spent next year. That is what us journalists love to call a tipping point. 

It's not a big surprise to see mobile doing well, considering how our attention has shifted from desktop to the small screen in our pocket. The story that you will probably not hear picked up from the eMarketer figures elsewhere is that as mobile moves from strength to strength it is mobile search and mobile video that are predicted to see the greatest growth. Search, as you would expect, is the biggest channel for mobile, as it is for desktop. This will continue more or less until 2020 as both search and display roughly double in budget size. 

The big news for mobile marketers, however, is that although it's a smaller channel, mobile video will quadruple in value over the same period. The even bigger news for digital marketing is where this new budget for mobile is coming from.

Put very simply, digital display will plateau for the next four years, eMarketer predicts, while desktop search is going to be slashed. In four years time, the figures suggest, desktop search will be roughly a quarter of the size it is today. This isn't enough to fund the doubling in size of mobile search over the same period but it goes a long way and underlines the switch marketers are going to be making in around 2019 and 2020 to virtually drop desktop search to concentrate on mobile.

So there we have it, the mobile is going to go from strength to strength as you would imagine it would but, in case you were wondering, that doubling in value in mobile search is going to come at the near collapse of desktop search as PPC budget chase eyeballs glued to smartphones rather than laptops.

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