The day is coming when Asia-Pacific will surpass North America as the world’s biggest advertising market. According to data published in eMarketer’s new “Global Media Intelligence Report,” which was released in collaboration with Starcom MediaVest Group, the question is not whether Asia will overtake North America in advertising spending; the question is when.

Currently, Asia-Pacific is in second place behind North America in total media ad spending worldwide. Advertisers are expected to spend $135.1 billion in the region in 2010, compared to an estimated $176.6 billion in the North American market.

But growth rates are a different story. The overall advertising market in North America is expected to grow about 2% each year through 2014, when it will reach $190.6 billion overall. Asia-Pacific, on the other hand, will see growth rates between 4% to 8% each year until 2014, when the total media ad market reaches $173 billion in the region.

Currently, North America controls 36.6% of the worldwide advertising market, compared to Asia-Pacific’s 28% share. But North America’s share will decline to an estimated 33.8% of the market by 2014, while Asia-Pacific’s slice will increase to 30.7%. Based on current growth rates, it’s likely that as the Asia-Pacific ad market continues to mature, it will eventually outshine that of North America sometime beyond 2014—most likely, in 2016 or 2017.

At the simplest level, the reasons behind the shift come down to sheer numbers. We’ve written before about the staggering number of mobile phone users in China (850 million in 2010, at last estimate), along with the fact that there will be more mobile internet users in China this year than the entire population of the US.

In addition to mobile users, massive “untapped” populations of internet users in China and India are another reason. China currently has an estimated 518 million active internet users, according to eMarketer estimates, compared to just 63.6 million in India. Combined, these two populations make up the fastest-growing demographic of internet users in the world, pegged by eMarketer to increase to over 1 billion by 2014. Knowing that, it’s no wonder marketers are spending more in Asia-Pacific, though I’m not sure whether we should be heartened or disheartened that, in a few years, we won’t be No. 1 anymore.

The “Global Media Intelligence” report covers six major regions worldwide — including countries in Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, North America, and Latin America — and focuses on digital and traditional media advertising spending trends, demographics, broadband and mobile penetration, media usage, and consumer behavior in each region. It is available exclusively for eMarketer Total Access clients.

The China Daily recently reported that China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless operator, announced a competition for video submissions for potential inclusion on a new mobile video channel. The carrier, which has more subscribers than the US has residents, will share video ad revenues—which could prove substantial in the near future—with the contest’s winners. In his latest eMarketer report, my colleague Noah Elkin estimates that mobile content revenues will soar in the US, driven partially by ad-supported video and music. Several factors suggest that the mobile content market in China—especially revenues from mobile TV and video—is headed down the same path.

ResearchInChina found that as of December 2009, mobile TV and online video adoption rates were relatively low, at 16.5% of mobile internet users in China. However, the popularity of other forms of online communication and entertainment suggest a highly receptive mobile audience.

eMarketer estimated in February 2010 that China will have over 850 million mobile phone subscribers by the end of 2010, for a penetration rate of 64.3%. We also projected that mobile internet users would increase 62.5% in 2010 to 372.8 million, with prospective growth rates remaining high through 2014.

What do these bits of information add up to? As more users buy smartphones and other entertainment-enabled phones, China Mobile is looking to maneuver itself to tap the potential of mobile video and TV revenues. According to Netsize and Informa Telecoms & Media, mobile video and TV account for only €127.27 million ($176.2 million) and €34.38 million ($47.8 million), respectively—less than 1% of all mobile content revenues in 2010.

China Mobile continues to expand current 3G coverage and is heavily investing in 4G, as InformationWeek reported, partnering with mobile hardware developers Nokia Siemens, Huawei and Samsung, among others, on their new proprietary 4G network standard. They are upgrading their network to broaden revenue generating services beyond messaging, voice and basic mobile internet.

All of this makes China even more attractive for multinational marketers and content providers.

With the clout of the largest wireless carrier in the world behind it, the push for mobile video and TV seems like a sure bet to expand subscriber usage far beyond current levels in China. And as smaller carriers such as China Unicom and China Telecom follow suit, marketers will literally be in position to easily place mobile video content — including ads, apps and entertainment — directly into the hands of the Chinese consumer.

Japanese businesses have been trailblazers when it comes to the use of internet and mobile technology. Two leaders in particular are eying overseas expansion in the face of domestic economic stagnation. Softbank and Rakuten, two very different yet equally ambitious Japanese firms, have been arranging foreign e-commerce partnerships at an astounding pace. And it could mean serious competition for Amazon.

Softbank, which combines solid financials based on its mobile, broadband and fixed-telecom businesses, has been increasingly investing in their internet service offerings. According to their latest company reports, mobile services remained the core business, with net sales of ¥1,701.4 billion ($18.2 billion) and 1,243,700 subscriber additions in FY2009 (April 2009-March 2010).

Like AT&T in the US, Softbank Mobile is the sole provider of the iPhone and iPad in Japan, providing a huge boost to average revenue per user. Internet services, including advertising, services and e-commerce, accounted for over ¥520 billion ($5.6 billion) in net sales during FY2009, an increase of ¥7.8 billion ($83.5 million) over FY2008.

Rakuten, on the other hand, operates on a significantly smaller scale but is showing tremendous growth. According to their FY2009 results, net sales amounted to ¥298.2 billion ($3.2 billion), a 19.4% increase over the previous year. In Q1 2010, Rakuten is off to a strong start with net sales of ¥79.2 billion ($848.0 million), up 19.3% verse Q1 2009. Sales are focused within Internet services (e-commerce, travel, portals and online media) and online financial services (credit card, banking and securities).

Both of these companies, along with Amazon Japan, are vying for dominance in the same space: Japan’s Internet, mobile and e-commerce markets. eMarketer estimated Japan had 93.4 million Internet users in 2010, ranked third in the world, and the International Telecommunications Union estimated Japan had nearly 115 million mobile subscribers in 2009. According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, e-commerce (including travel) in Japan reached totals of ¥2.93 trillion ($31 billion) in 2008, an increase of 14.8% year-over-year, as reported in Rakuten’s Q1 report.

Marsh Research found that 96.3% of Internet users in Japan purchased goods online in March 2010, suggesting a mature and sophisticated consumer market. The same study showed that 68.9% of online buyers in Japan purchased items at Rakuten, followed by Amazon at 38.1% and Yahoo! Shopping (a subsidiary of Softbank) at 34.3%.

The combination of domestic saturation and high rates of mobile and online spending has led these two companies to amass serious amounts of cash. With that cash in hand they are ready to capitalize on opportunities in foreign markets, despite a weakening yen.

Rakuten was the first to make a move in 2010, as TechCrunch reported a joint venture with Baidu to build an online B2B2C shopping mall in China based on Rakuten’s Japanese site. According to Rakuten’s quarterly statement, the site is scheduled to go live sometime in the second half of 2010.

Softbank has been silently investing in Internet companies in China for years, but in May 2010 Marbridge Consulting reported a new partnership between Yahoo Japan and Chinese e-commerce firm Taobao that will allow cross-border linking of sales and inventory data. Taobao is the largest e-commerce site in China and part of the Alibaba Group, which Softbank has been an investor in since 2000.

The two firms are salivating at the potential access to a huge and growing market of online buyers in China, estimated at 108 million in December 2009 by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

Not satisfied to dominate Japan and enter the rest of Asia, Rakuten is also looking further afield. Setting their sights across the Pacific, the company purchased Buy.com for $250 million to bolster their US and European reach. Moving fast in the month of May, Rakuten also announced a partnership with Indonesia’s largest media firm, PT Global Mediacom Tbk. This partnership will bring Rakuten’s online marketplace to approximately 20 million Internet users in the country, according to the ITU.

Two weeks ago, Rakuten made another move in Europe, acquiring the French e-commerce website PriceMinister for €200 million ($280 million). In an interview with LeJournalduNet, Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO and founder of Rakuten, said that they intend to use PriceMinister as their European platform and want to expand the site into Germany and Spain as well. He also stated that there are no immediate acquisitions on Rakuten’s radar at the moment, but that could change very quickly.

Last year, TechCrunch speculated that Rakuten could be Amazon’s biggest competition that no one had heard about. While that article may have jumped the gun, it proved prophetic. Recent partnerships and acquisitions suggest that Rakuten has emerged as a real threat to Amazon and other dominant e-commerce players in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Softbank is a unique company that has successfully integrated a steady and profitable telecommunications industry with online services, a feat that has been elusive for US companies (see AOL). For now, they appear content with a more concrete expansion into the largest consumer population in the world, China. It will be interesting to see how the Yahoo! Japan-Taobao link plays out in the eyes of the government, if it will cross or coalesce the growing nationalistic protectionist sentiment among China’s ‘netizens’ and government.

Either way, competition for worldwide e-commerce supremacy just got much more fierce.

Note: all currency conversions made at annual 2009 average. Rakuten logo via Wikipedia.

Several recent reports have drawn some interesting conclusions about the online advertising market in the Asia-Pacific region. The takeaway: Things are heating up much faster than expected.

The Nielsen Company recently reported double digit growth for Q1 2010 advertising spending in Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand over the same period in 2009. Ad spending in the first quarter of 2010 totaled IDR13.2 trillion ($1.27 billion), NT$9.9 billion ($299.5 million) and THB22.79 billion ($664.4 million), respectively. Out of those three countries, Indonesia recorded the highest growth at 26%, followed by Taiwan (22.8%) and Thailand (10.8%).

Online ad spending led the rebound in Thailand, growing 68.29%, mostly due to lower levels of investment. It’s important to note that Nielsen Indonesia did not include online advertising and Taiwan did not separate out figures on Internet ad sales from its total advertising spending.

Nielsen’s Hong Kong office also recently reported that online ad revenues reached HK$255 million ($32.7 million in US dollars) in Q4 2009 to boost full year spending to HK$869 million ($111.4 million US). The total number of advertisers and campaigns more than doubled from Q4 2008 to Q4 2009, signaling an acceptance of online ads among advertisers in Hong Kong.

The Interactive Advertising Bureaus of Australia, New Zealand and Singapore also recently released their latest data for total advertising spending, with the Web leading the way. Online advertising in Australia was up 17% in the first quarter of 2010 year-over-year, propelled by a surge in search and directory spending. In May, IAB New Zealand reported a 12.3% increase in Q1 2010 and IAB Singapore estimates that online spending grew 30.2% from the first half of 2008 through the first half of 2009.

I know it’s quite a bit of data to digest in a short blog post, but it boils down to one point: Online advertising saw sustained growth throughout Asia-Pacific, compared to a 9.8% contraction in total advertising spending worldwide from 2008 to 2009 as estimated by ZenithOptimedia.

It’s not anything new to say that Asia is a huge opportunity for marketers looking to reach out overseas to seemingly untapped masses. The region’s exploding mobile market, for example, offers plenty of potential for advertisers. (There are more mobile Internet users in China right now than there are people living in the United States. If that’s not potential I don’t know what is.) What this data does show, however, is that online advertising is booming in the Asian market, and for the first time, marketers won’t be able to count on Asia being “untapped” much longer, at least online.

Note: All currency conversions were made using the average 2009 exchange rate.

While China continues to grab headlines in the US for its censorship policies, major espionage operations (NYTimes), and subsequent battle with Google, an interesting undercurrent is emerging from the news: There are several signs that suggest the next big online story about China is going to be Facebook.

Here’s why.

The social networking market in China is huge, with firms estimating between 43% (InSites Consulting) and 49% (comScore, Inc) of Internet users in China actively using or visiting a social network. That’s an estimated 245 million social networking site users, according to a January 2010 report by the Data Center of China Internet (DCCI), a 33.9% increase over 2008.

After a July 2009 incident in Xinjiang, the government in China placed several social networks, including Facebook, on a block list in order to control the spread of news. Reports from Inside Facebook show that only 14,000 active users in China logged on in October 2009, down from 1 million prior to being placed on the block list. Facebook remains on that block list to this day.

There are two factors that lead me to believe a push into China is in the cards for Facebook. First, Sina.com (via BusinessWeek) recently reported that an unidentified source asserted Facebook would re-emerge onto the Chinese market by the end of 2010.

Second, Reuters has reported that one of the largest Internet companies in China, Tencent, invested $300 million in a Russian tech investor, Digital Sky Technologies (DST). Last year, DST purchased a 3.5% stake in Facebook for the nearly same amount. DST operates the second-most popular Russian social network, Odnoklassniki.ru, and e-mail service Mail.ru. At the time, Silicon Alley Insider hypothesized that Facebook was undertaking international expansion by actively seeking out local partners abroad.

Tencent’s value-added services, including the popular instant messaging platform (QQ), produced revenues of $1.4 billion, and online advertising brought in $140.9 million in 2009. Facebook could be positioning itself as a partner for Tencent’s less popular social network, Qzone, to compete with leading sites 51.com, Baidu Space, Kaixin001.com and Xiaonei.com (RenRen).

There are definitely more dots that need to be connected (remember that access to Facebook.com is still blocked in China, for the most part). That said, with Tencent in its corner, it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.