Mobile Search To Hit $15B In 2017

Yelp-App-BJuniper Research issued a new forecast Wednesday projecting revenue from mobile search and discovery will nearly triple to $15 billion worldwide in five years.

The U.K.-based firm says growth will be fueled in part by high click-through and cost-per-click rates for different types of mobile search. Users are often looking for a discrete set of products and services and can be accurately targeted by advertisers.

Juniper suggests local search apps like Poynt, Qype and Yelp represent a bigger opportunity for advertisers than the Web-based mobile search because they provide more relevant ad results and a better user experience.

“Web search results, by their very nature, are more generalized, despite the local parameters search engines offer. Furthermore, the Web sites linked-to in search results are often not optimized for mobile devices,” according to report author Daniel Ashdown.

Among other findings from the Juniper report:

*Google’s domination of the mobile Web search space means other players need to find ways to differentiate their products in a largely commoditized market.

*Augmented reality search is increasingly being deployed as an add-on feature, rather than a standalone product.

*Adoption of discovery services for apps is driven by the high number of applications on leading storefronts, but faces challenge from big brands, with Apple acquiring Chomp and Facebook launching an app center.

 
1 comment about "Mobile Search To Hit $15B In 2017".
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  1. Dev Bhatia from http://mtrax.com, July 29, 2012 at 2:01 a.m.

    I can verify that certain types of mobile ads drive higher clickthrough rates. At mTrax (http://mtrax.com) we're setting up mobile search campaigns for our Small Business clients on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. We're putting them exclusively in click-to-call, and clickthrough rates are higher across the board. I should add that the web search results on the major search engines may be general, but this is an opportunity. Small businesses should be getting into paid search and locking up the top results in their areas for their services. This is an arbitrage opportunity at the moment, as less than 5% of SMBs have set up mobile search listings.

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