According to new research from eMarketer, Twitter is now ahead of its primary competitor Facebook in mobile advertising revenue.

2012 takings

A recent survey by the market research company projected that Twitter will achieve $129.7million in mobile ad revenues in 2012.

Meanwhile Facebook, which only entered into the realm of mobile ads this year, will come in at just over half of Twitter's revenues with $72.7m.

“Mobile is a long-term play for Facebook,” eMarketer said, expecting the social networking giant to beat Twitter next year by a large margin, likely grabbing more than $385m in United States mobile ads revenue.

Neither company ranks among more established platforms such as Google and Pandora, which have honed their advertising craft over years, pulling in $1,423.1m and $226.4m respectively.

Twinnings

In June, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo reported that its mobile platform surpassed its website in terms of generating advertising revenue, four months after the company first introduced ads to its mobile app timelines.

Twitter gains revenues from mobile through promoted tweets, which make up a large portion of ad revenues.

Promoted tweets have recently been improved for better targeting and location-specific ads.

Mobile money

Facebook continues to earn most of its ad revenue from desktop ads, and has been open with its shareholders about the problems it faces generating revenue from mobile.

Screen real estate is scarce on comparatively small mobile displays, and Facebook has so far resisted cluttering its app with ad banners, instead launching options to allow ads in news feeds.

With an increasing proportion of its 955million users accessing the site using their mobile, Facebook will continue its attempts to successfully monetise its mobile app products.

eMarketer based estimates on analysis of reported company revenues, as well as other research firms' advertising revenues, pricing, impressions, and other factors.

Major mobile advertising publishers' usage trends and eMarketer interviews with executives also play a role in the estimates.

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