Digital advertising will have well and truly overtaken TV in global ad spending by 2018 after first surpassing it next year, predicts Zenith Optimedia in its latest forecast, with the former capturing 37.7% share of global ad spend to the latter’s 34.1% by 2018. Notably, while desktop internet ad spending currently is about twice as high as mobile internet ad spending, ad spending on these devices is expected to almost reach parity by 2018.
In the US, eMarketer recently forecast that digital would overtake TV in ad spending next year, while mobile would grow to rival TV itself by 2020.
Overall, global ad spending is projected to increase by 4.6% this year, by 4.1% next year, and by 4.2% in 2018.
The following is a brief list of intriguing data points sourced from recent research.
- Digital accounts for almost half of all US marketing and advertising spending, estimates Outsell in its latest Advertising and Marketing Study, based on a survey of more than 1,500 US marketers. Digital’s $228 billion in estimated spending would equal the combined spending on print ($96 billion), TV/radio/cinema ($88 billion) and events ($45 billion). It’s worth noting that the estimate for print being larger than TV, radio, and cinema combined is curious given other research into ad spending.
- Brands can potentially increase their advertising ROI by 19% by going from one media platform to a second, per an extensive ARF study reported on by Ad Age. Indeed, the study found that ROI increased with each additional platform used, with the use of 5 platforms leading to a lift of 35% over the use of just one platform.
- Sticking with ROI, a survey of 40 US budget owners and influencers from Leapfrog Marketing Institute finds only a bare majority (54%) saying that more than half of their budget is accountable for measurable ROI. More than two-thirds said that Millennials are a target segment for their business, and about 1 in 5 said that at least one-quarter of their budgets are focused on that generation.
- Keeping with ROI one more time, the latest study from RBC Capital Markets and Ad Age reveals that advertisers believe that Google provides the best digital advertising ROI, ahead of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo and AOL. Spending growth was most commonly planned for Facebook; respondents were almost as likely to say that they were decreasing (23%) as increasing (32%) their spending on Twitter, which was the only platform to see ROI perceptions decline from the prior survey.
- Internet users in the East Coast, South and eastern Midwest states are more likely to click on retargeted ads than users in other states, per an AdRoll analysis of millions of impressions across 100 cities and all 50 states. Columbus, OH ranked as the top city with a click-through rate (CTR) of 10%, four times higher than Sunnyvale, CA, which had the lowest CTR, of 2.5%. The analysis notes that several cities in the greater San Francisco area were among the 15 cities with the lowest click-through rates.
- Shifting gears, the latest quarterly video index report from Ooyala [download page] notes that almost half (46%) of video plays in Q4 came from tablets and smartphones. The uptick in share for tablets (14% in Q4, up from 12% in the second and third quarters) was only the second increase since 2013, per the report.
- US traffic to leading subscription box sites have soared over the past 3 years by a multiple of almost 30, per data from Hitwise, a division of Connexity, which notes that traffic to the Hitwise Retail 500 (the top 500 online retail sites) grew by only 168% in the same period. Some 4.3% of US adults visited a subscription box industry site in Q4 2015, and the top sites in the US are Birchbox and Dollar Shave Club. The median age of visitors to these sites is 41, and 58% are female. A slight majority of visitors in the 12 weeks ending on January 23, 2016 came from mobile devices.
- Keeping on the retail theme, a study from Bazaarvoice [download page] determines that for every $1 of online revenue influenced by review content, up to $5 of in-store revenue is influenced by those reviews, depending on the product (e.g. flat-panel TV – $4.29; Xbox One – $5.07; DSLR camera – $5.21). Noting the growing influence of researching online and buying offline (ROBO), the study indicates that appliances, electronics and men’s apparel are among the categories most likely to be researched online before being purchased offline.
- A survey from First Insight reveals that the average US consumer subscribers to 2.3 retailer email lists, receiving 13.1 emails a week from those lists. Two-thirds of respondents who receive 6 or more emails a week feel that it is too many, with 5 or fewer emails deemed more acceptable. The survey of 1,112 US consumers also found that only 5.5% of emails are considered “personally relevant” to the recipient.
- Finally, a recent survey from the NRF finds that planned spending surrounding Easter is expected to grow to $17.3 billion this year, up from $16.4 billion last year. Celebrants estimate that they’ll spend an average of $146, an increase of more than $5 from last year’s average of $140.62. That’s the highest level in the survey’s 13-year history, per the report.
Have a great weekend!
