Emerging markets to dominate mobile advertising : InMobi

The research, conducted in conjunction with Informa Telecoms & Media, predicts that around 30 per cent of revenues will come from the Asia-Pacific developing region, driven by strong growth in China and India.

It points out that fifteen so-called emerging markets, including China, India and Indonesia in Asia, account for more mobile subscriptions than the combined total for the rest of the world.

According to Informa, the 15 markets generated close to a third of global mobile data services revenues last year, driven by the growing availability of low cost but feature rich handsets. The company estimates that the number of mobile internet users in China and India will rise to around 730 million by 2014.

This growth is leading to increased activity in the mobile space from advertisers. InMobi claims advertising requests rose from seven billion to nearly 32 billion last year, many of which came from the emerging markets.

InMobi cites a lack of pervasive channel options in these markets as a key driver, and predicts that while monetisation of the mobile platform is currently much higher in Western Europe and the US, the gap will close as a result of this combined with the scale of the mobile user base and growth of data services in emerging markets.