Mobile advertising is predicted to become an important telecommunication’s revenue and monetization strategies. Comparing to web-based advertising, there are several advantages of mobile advertising, including a high penetration rate, personal communication device, individually addressable, multimedia capability, and interactive. “Thus, advertisers and B2B marketing companies such as JumpFactor can associate each user with fully personalized ads to increase the large value of mobile ads.

Before getting deeper into mobile advertising , let’s start with the step by step evolution of mobile into the market:

  • 1973: In 1973 Motorola was the first company to produce first portable phone, Martin Cooper, a project manager in Motorola made the first call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.
  • 1978: Advanced Mobile Phone System, the first analog cellular system (1G network) widely deployed in North America.
  • 1990: The mobile phones first appeared in the market.
  • 1991: The second generation of mobile telecoms (2G network) was introduced in Finland by Radiolinja (now Elisa)
  • 1992: On December 3rd, 1992 Neil Papworth was the first person to send the world’s first ever text message.
  • 1993: The first clickable web ad or online banner ad was sold to a Silicon Valley law firm by a website called Global Network Navigator.
  • 1994: HotWired, the first commercial web magazine was the first web site to sell banner ads in large quantities to a wide range of major corporate advertisers. AT&T was one of the first big companies to buy online advertising through the HotWired site.
  • 1994: The first person-to-person SMS text message was sent in Finland.
  • 1995: Yahoo launched the first keyword ad “Golf”.
  • 1997: Finnish news provider offered free news headlines via short message service (SMS).
  • 2000: Mobile Marketing Association, a global non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain was founded.
  • 2000: The first mobile advertising conference convened in London, hosted by the Wireless Marketing Association.
  • 2000: Google launched Google AdWords.
  • 2006: Admob, a mobile advertising company founded by Omar Hamoui, now by Google launches its mobile advertising platform in 2006
  • 2006: Another Mobile advertising platform company, Millennial Media, founded.
  • 2007: Google got into the smartphone game by launching the Android phone with open-source software.
  • 2009: Google buys Admob for $750-million.
  • 2010: Apple releases its mobile advertising platform, iAd
  • 2010: According to eMarketer, the size of the U.S. mobile advertising market increases to $1.45-billion.
  • 2011: 8 trillion text messages have been sent worldwide.
  • 2011: Mobile Services revenue exceeded $1 Trillion for the first time.
  • 2012: Smartphones have become one of the fastest spreading technologies in history, with 50% of U.S. mobile phone users (and 40% of the U.S. population) now owning smartphones.
  • 2012: Facebook launches mobile ads on the Facebook mobile app, which is used by over half of the site’s 850 million users to access the site.
  • 2013: Total Global subscriptions exceeded 7 billion in early 2013.
  • 2013: Mobile Broadband (4G) is being deployed at a faster rate than previous generations.

2 thoughts on “History of Mobile Advertising”

  1. A major gamechanger for both the mobile and advertising industry was when the iPhone was released in 2007. I think this is important to add to your timeline.

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