Advertising To Drive Mobile Social Networking

Ad- supported social networks will make up most of the revenues in the mobile user-generated content (UGC) space by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research.


The report says that the total value of the UGC market, consisting of social networking, dating and personal content delivery (PCD) services will increase from $1.1 billion in 2008 to more than $7.3 billion in 2013, with social networking surpassing dating to become the largest revenue generating segment by 2009.


Advertising will become increasingly important, as it will account for nearly one -third of total revenues in the UGC space by the end of the forecast period, and more than half of mobile social networking revenues.


“It’s clear that we have seen an industry wide shift regarding the implementation of business models in this area,” said Dr. Windsor Holden, author of the report.


“Whereas initially there was a perception that users would pay a small mobility premium to access social networks on their handsets, it rapidly became clear that to achieve truly mass adoption, it would be necessary to offer free membership and then to augment that with advertising and the sale of premium content.”


While the iPhone has significantly increased public awareness of mobile content services, there is room for improvement when it comes to the marketing of such services within the industry as a whole. The report also said that operators need to cut data costs outside of bundles to drive casual use of social networking and data services.


The number of active users of mobile social networking sites is on track to increase from 54 million in 2008 to nearly 730 million in 2013.


The Far East & China region will be most popular in terms of mobile user number for mobile social networking and PCD throughout the forecast period, but the Indian Sub Continent will become the largest region for mobile dating services by 2010.