45.5% of small businesses use at least one type of mobile advertising, according to Wave 20 of our Local Commerce Monitor™ survey of small businesses (Q3/2016). Among the mobile advertising channels, text messaging was the most popular with small businesses and the second most popular was mobile websites.

There is a big disconnect in small businesses use of mobile location ad formats (8%) considering that 31.2% of small businesses with a physical presence reported that consumers are using their phones in store to make a purchase decision.

Another way that small businesses are using mobile channels is mobile payments. 66.7% of small businesses reported that they accept mobile payments, with Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and Android Paybeing the most used.

According to Mike Boland, chief analyst and vice president of content at BIA/Kelsey, mobile* is the fastest growing among all location-targeted media that BIA/Kelsey tracks in its Mobile Ad Revenue Forecast. When panning back to mobile’s overall U.S. ad spend (local and non-local), it’s estimated at $33 billion in 2016, growing to $72 billion by 2020, a 17 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Zeroing in on the location-targeted portion of that overall mobile ad spend, it will grow from $12 billion in 2016 to $32 billion in 2021, a 21 percent CAGR. That translates to 38 percent of overall mobile ad revenues today, growing to 45 percent by 2020. Drivers include mobile users’ commercial intent and advertisers’ evolution to align with that behavior.

*In the forecast, BIA/Kelsey’s mobile calculations do not include tablets.

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