The more than $500 million mobile advertising market looks set to multiply in just a few years, helped by new technologies and the spread of more advanced phones, a Reuters report said.
The Reuters report quoted executives attending Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris, New York and Seoul as saying that the demand for mobile advertising was finally rising after years of high hopes in the industry.
'I think mobile is one of the great growth opportunities,' Randy Falco, head of AOL, which this week purchased mobile advertising company Third Screen Media, was quoted by Reuters as saying.
'It will certainly be in the $4.5 billion to $5 billion range in terms of the marketplace (in five years),' he said, adding that estimates for the annual market now range from $500 million to $900 million.
The Reuters report also quoted Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group as saying that he sees mobile advertising as an interesting area, which has much growth ahead.
'My sense is that that is an area that is small but growing fairly rapidly,' he said.
Strategy Analytics, one of the most cautious forecasters on mobile advertising market growth, has forecast global mobile advertising market will reach $574 million this year and grow almost three-fold by 2010, the report said.
In addition to media firms and telecom operators, Internet players Google and Yahoo and the world's top cell phone maker Nokia Oyj are also keen to have a piece of the growing pie, the Reuters report further said.