Mary Meeker Says Advertisers Are Not Spending Enough on Mobile

Google and Facebook make up the vast share of digital advertising in the US, according to Mary Meekers famed Internet Trends report, which dropped this morning. The two companies have staked out a 76 percent share of US Internet ad growth, Meeker saysand that share is rising. Overall US Internet advertising grew by 20 percent from 2014 to 2015. Thats mainly owing to mobile ads, which grew 66 percent year over year, compared to desktop ads, which only grew by 5 percent.

And yet advertisers still aren’t advertising on mobile nearly enough, Meeker argues. They’re still committing too many of their dollars to so-called legacy media. Meeker pegs the mobile ad market at $22 billion in the US, pointing to data that shows people spend 25 percent of their time on mobile devices compared to 36 percent watching television, 22 percent staring at the Internet on their desktops, 13 percent listening to radio, and 4 percent reading print. At the same time, spending on mobile ads only accounts for 12 percent of the total advertising pie.

Which social networks are people spending the most time in? For millennials, at least, its Facebook (by far), Instagram (which, notably, is owned by Facebook), and Snapchat. Meeker is particularly bullish on the potential of brand filters integrated into Snapchat Snaps, citing data that the average Snapchatter plays with a sponsored lens for 20 seconds (a long time in the online ad world). And these filters can garner tens or even hundreds of millions of views.