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Will TV Get Its Share Of Mobile TV Ads?

Watching more TV/video on your laptop -- or perhaps mobile devices? TV network executives are focused on where the advertising dollars are traveling.

Are linear half-hour or hour-long TV shows playing well, and making ad money, on mobile devices -- smartphones and tablets? Probably not. But there might have some cool related clips and highlights about one’s premium prime-time TV shows. Does that count?

Internet Advertising Bureau says mobile advertising almost doubled in the first six months of this year, versus the same period a year -- up 90% to $15.5 billion. That is just about half the entire total of digital media advertising. Digital ad revenues were 19% higher to  $32.7 billion for the first half of 2016.

Total digital video was up 50% in the first half of the year to $3.9 billion.  Perhaps more importantly video advertising on mobile devices was the fastest growing component of mobile --- up 180% versus a year ago to $1.6 billion. Desktop digital video grew 13% to $2.3 billion.

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By all accounts, digital media advertising activity benefits the two big players: Google and Facebook. Where is traditional media in this mix, especially in video?

Traditional TV networks that play in the digital media space are happy that digital video -- especially the premium video component of that category -- will continue to be a strong player. Media buyers say they would buy more of it if more TV inventory was available. For the past two upfronts, media buyers also said they’d buy more Google Preferred, selective big viewing YouTube content, if that ad inventory was available.

For mobile -- how does this play for traditional TV providers? TV show advertising growth for tablets? More mobile devices connected to the big TV screens?

Right now mobile video advertising is a tiny piece of the overall media puzzle  and the much larger TV/video advertising component.

But the future?

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