Mobile ad spending will rise roughly 62% this year to $6,4 billion, according to a new report. The new growth is led predominantly by strong growth in the US, where more than 50% of mobile users now use a smartphone.

eMarketer, a research firm that’s crunched the numbers, estimates that the US mobile ad industry will grow by a ridiculous 96,6% in 2012, to $2,3 billion.

This also means that for the first time, the US market for mobile ad spend will be bigger than Japan’s. Japan’s market isn’t slowing, it too will grow by 27,2% to $1,7 billion, but it’s considered a more mature market. Western Europe is experiencing faster growth than the East at 68,3%, but overall spend is smaller than both the States and Japan at $1,3 billion.

During the first three weeks of April 2012, more than 500 million people accessed Facebook through their mobile phone. Of that number, 80 million only access Facebook through a mobile phone.

So why is Facebook getting it so wrong then? Maybe part of the riddle, such as is the case with Facebook, is the development of apps (read: building a brand (with creative product lines and merchandise for example)) that people want to use. Charging for that app would be silly, but driving the consumer to purchase aspects the brand produces, wouldn’t.

For a company like Facebook that’s seeing massive decreases in projected revenue, and that’s literally watching its share price dip to new lows every day, the time to make something happen, is now.

Yesterday, The Atlantic asked this question: why are banner ads all over the web, if no one likes them?

Their answer, in short:

Banner ads scale easily; banner ads look like the kind of “creative” people are used to; and banner ads sell like print ads (“Put your pictures and words near our pictures and words!”)

Any new model for online advertising has an uphill battle. They not only have to sell ads. They have to sell the very idea of a new kind of advertising.

They also quoted Brian Morissey, who said this:

Agencies know how to build and buy them; publishers know how to sell them.

InMobi, the largest independent mobile ad network, and who currently reach 578 million consumers in 165 countries across five continents, recently enabled HTML5/JavaScript developers to use in-app advertisements in cross-platform native mobile apps as a solution.

It’s safe to assume that brands will be looking to the advertising gurus for more creative advertising solutions in the months and years to come.

[Source: NYTimes]