For the fifth year in a row, advertising has topped the list of agency services searches on Agency Spotter’s platform. In a report [download page] analyzing more than 320,000 professionals who use their public agency search platform in 2018, the firm found that 10.5% of agency searches were for advertising services.
Not only was advertising the top services search, but it also boasts the highest growth in share of searches (0.83 points year-over-year) of all the services analyzed.
Agency Spotter attributes the growth in advertising search to the continued growth in digital advertising. There is validity in this speculation, considering more than half (54.2%) of total media ad spending in the US this year is expected to be directed towards digital advertising.
The second-ranked search in 2018 was for direct marketing, per the report. At its second year at this position, direct marketing saw a modes 0.13 point increase in share of searches from the year before, reaching 5.4% of the total.
Digital strategy was #3 on the list, up 0.26% points from 2017 to reach 4.7% of service searches.
The only search result within the top 5 not to witness an uptick in share of service searches was web services. As the fourth-ranking result, web services captured 4.5% of service searches (essentially flat year-over-year, with a very minor 0.02% point dip.)
Rounding out the top 5 was social media, which had 4.31% of the service searches, up 0.15% points from the previous year.
Despite a majority of marketers finding influencer marketing effective, especially when it comes to ROI, influencer marketing ranked 25th on the list of service searches and experienced a year-over-year decrease in share of searches.
AR/VR was ranked at the bottom of the list at number 41, with only 0.42% of service searches. Agency Spotter suggests that AR/VR is still in the early adoption stage despite recent hype. This is evident in weak consumer growth seen by professionals within the AR/VR industry.
To read more, download the report here.
About the Data: The report was based on data compiled from more than 320,000 professionals who used Agency Spotter’s public agency search platform during 2018.
