Mobile Device Ads Boost Twitter Ad Revenue

Twitter will reach close to $1 billion in revenue from advertising in 2014 thanks to a huge surge in advertising on mobile devices, according to new reports that were released late Wednesday.

Mobile ads, said the report, will account for close to 50% of advertising revenue for Twitter this year and will account for over 60% of the ad revenue for the company before 2015, said research released by eMarketer, an online research firm.

The ever growing popularity of mobile ads on Twitter, which were first introduced in March of 2012, caused the research firm to increase its estimate for ad revenue in 2014 for Twitter to nearly $950 million, versus an estimate previously of just over $800 million. This year ad revenue for Twitter will reach about $583 million, said the report, which is roughly double the ad revenue generated during 2012.

Twitter allows its users to share messages that are up to 140 characters in length on its service online. It remains privately held and does not share its financial results.

The service has over 200 million active users monthly and is among the most popular social sites on the Web. Twitter is expected to possibly go public within the next 24 to 36 months.

As consumers access the Internet more and more on their smartphones, mobile ads are becoming increasingly more important to Web businesses such as Google and Facebook. Facebook said at the start of 2013, that ad revenue from mobile devices doubled between the third and fourth quarter of 2012. That represented close to 23% of its overall $1.33 billion in ad revenue for the fourth quarter.