Several years ago Dan Miller and I built a mobile advertising forecast that factored in display, search and pay per call. We haven't updated it in part because we've been extremely busy but also because the market is so dynamic. Beyond this there are scores of mobile ad forecasts out there, so it just seemed like adding more noise to the cocophany.

Here's what we projected in 2008:

There's a new mobile ad-revenue forecast out today from eMarketer, which upwardly revises to $2.6 billion (2012) the company's previous forecast. It's very close to our number above. EMarketer's number is somewhat larger -- but not by much. 

While the eMarketer forecast isn't an "average" of third party data, it reviews and takes into account the other data in the market:

Generally speaking, most forecasts are either too conservative ("contrarian") or overly "optimistic," often in an effort to grab attention and coverage for the firms generating them. 

If (or when) we re-do our mobile ad forecast above -- since this year is( the final year of the projection -- our methodology will likely change somewhat, because the market has changed so much in the past four years. Frankly, I'm surprised and pleased that our forecast has so closely tracked the actual growth of mobile ad revenues.