Revenues for mobile videos in the US totaled $146m in the first quarter, an increase of 198 per cent year on year according to consumer research firm Telephia.

There were 8.4 million mobile video subscribers at the end of the first quarter with penetration doubling to nearly four per cent since the same period last year.

“Within a very short time, the number of mobile video subscribers has grown to over 8 million, comparable with the average audience size for an episode of The Sopranos this season,” said Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of mobile media at Telephia.

The research firm suggests that its data proves consumers are ‘primed’ for viewing adverts on their handsets. According to Telephia, video consumers had the highest recall of viewing ads on their phones as compared to all data service consumers, with 55 per cent saying they recalled viewing a mobile ad in the last 30 days. This is almost three times the recall rate for mobile data consumers in general. Even more promising, 41 per cent of mobile video consumers recently responded in some way to an ad, an encouraging sign for advertisers.

The global advertising market is reckoned to be worth about $450bn annually, however, mobile accounts from only a fraction of that according to David Barker, MD Europe, US mobile advertising firm Enpocket. “At the moment it’s under one per cent,” he told telecoms.com.

Undoubtedly, there is money to be made from advertising on mobile. The big question though is how exactly to make it?