Over the next five years global mobile media revenue from consumers and advertisers will exceed $900 Billion according to Strategy Analytics’ latest forecast “Global Mobile Media Forecast: 2016-2026”. Mobile content includes spending by consumers on a variety of content on their mobile phones, including games, apps, video, music, and social media.
The future expansion in mobile media revenue will be enabled as the base of mobile broadband enabled smartphone owners continues to rise, 5G penetration increases, and consumers increasingly look to their primary mobile devices to access information, news and social networks, play games, watch video content, and stream music.
Over the forecast period 5G will have an increasingly positive impact on data traffic and data revenue for operators as consumption rises and will also underpin the continued rise in consumer and advertiser expenditure on mobile content. That said, 5G won’t facilitate a significant step change in mobile content and mobile media revenue growth.
The increased mobile data capacity, faster data speeds and lower latency benefits of 5G will enable digital media companies to deliver evolved rich media experiences, like 360 video, HD video, cloud gaming, AR/VR, and future metaverse applications, at greater scale over mobile networks to smartphones and other connected screens. However, consumer demand for these emerging content formats on smartphones remains niche and going forward its essential for content creators, publishers and distributors to understand, rather than assume which specific market segments are willing to pay a premium for immersive mobile experiences.
Indeed, despite the challenge posed by the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) controls, advertising will pay an increasingly important role in the growth of the mobile content revenue. Advertising revenue will rise from a fifth of the total mobile media revenue in 2021 to over a quarter by 2026, increasing at a CAGR of 9% during this 5-year period. The animated chart up top compares the growth of revenue from consumers on content and associated data against that of mobile advertising.