You don’t have to be a Madison Avenue (or even Silicon Valley) big wig to know that Google, Twitter and Facebook are big figures in the mobile advertising space. What you might not realize is exactly how big a chunk of that market these three companies control.
According to a recent blog posting on Barrons.com titled, Facebook, Twitter, Google Racking Up Mobile Ad Spend, Says Baird, these three web titans are responsible for 70% of all mobile advertising and 10% of all advertising.
Barrons’ source for this bombshell revelation is a report from the private equity firm, R.W. Baird. Baird seems pretty gung-ho about the bit three’s prospects for maintaining their mobile advertising edge, even if their end-users aren’t:
Moreover, Facebook’s tweaks to the news feed algorithm appear to favor paid postings at the expense of “organic” postings, likely driving higher levels of spending on the site.
In Twitter’s case, Baird says that mobile ad spending is going to be very good for the company’s stock price in the near future and should facilitate plenty of growth. They also suggest that Twitter growth will continue to benefit from special events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics.
While it’s no surprise that Facebook, Google, and Twitter so utterly dominate the mobile advertising space, it is fair to ask whether so much market share in the hands of such a small group is really such a good thing?