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According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Ad Spend” on digital advertising will surpass TV ads for the first time in 2017. The trend is actually could start right now in 2016. Projections for the end of 2016 is that US digital ad spending will reach $72.09 billion and TV spending will grow to $71.29 billion, as quoted by eMarketer. For all these years, television gave a really tough fight to internet with respect to Ad spend. However, its breathing its last and making way for online advertising to decisively take over the market in 2017
Why and how did this change take place?
There are plenty of reasons that has contributed towards digital advertising pacing ahead in this race. I have listed 6 of the really prominent reasons below:
1. Digital Advertising is precise:
Digital advertising platforms have sophisticated models of customer targeting, combined with smart campaign & Ad design. This provides the ability to design specific ads that will appeal to different segments of the audience and have it displayed at the appropriate time. The personal devices (read mobile) are taking Personalization of ads to a whole new level making it relevant and timely. With these platforms, you can design a campaign for a Small Business Owner with Affinity for Mid-High Value Goods (behavior), female aged 35 – 45 years (Demographic), interested in Beauty products (Interests) when she is close to your store (Location) on her mobile phone (Device Type) with a creative and caption that would appeal to her (this target segment). You can also fix what is the maximum budget you are willing to spend for this one engagement.
2. Digital Advertising is measurable:
The fact that each and every campaign that is undertaken in the online space can be monitored and tracked with respect to multiple metrics to the most accurate level, has won over the marketers across the globe. The same cannot be said about Ad spending on television where data retrieved is only approximate and the metrics are also limited. The data generated in digital ad platform can be analyzed at multiple levels – How many people saw the ad, How many of them clicked on it, How many took some action that was intended by the marketer and how many conversions the campaign achieved. Now these dimensions can be further sliced and diced by time, location, device type etc., to arrive at levels of intelligence that gives you the ability to optimize the ad spend to the last penny. Your ROI on the digital spend in clearly measurable at every stage.
3. Digital Advertising is Easy of Use:
Digital Advertising is relatively easy to set up for the basic campaigns and gives the ability for small business owners to try it out and see the results. It is only when they need to get to more advanced and involved advertising, businesses will need help of experts to help them understand customer persona, segmentation, campaign design, ad customization, monitoring, optimization etc., Managing these intricate details could be a time consuming exercise and this is when they hire an agency to manage the digital advertising, as they need to focus on other business priorities. In comparison, the TV is far out of reach and setting up an ad campaign on TV needs lot of effort and much complex.
4. Proliferation of Mobile Phones and High Speed Connectivity:
Mobile phone usage has increased tremendously over the past few years and this has been extremely instrumental in driving digital advertising to the forefront. As per statista.com, the number of mobile phone users is forecast to reach 4.77 billion for 2017. This only suggests that the number of people using internet has increased thus accelerating online ad viewing / spending. As mentioned in our previous post, eMarketer has stated that the average time spent on mobile browsers is 51 minutes and Apps is 195 minutes in the USA. This explains how advertising and adaptive designs are turning out to be the new focus areas for marketers.
5. Social Media Adoption:
Social media has also contributed to a great extent to the overall ad spends on the internet. According to reports stated by smartinsights.com, the overall social media users across the world accounts to 2.37 billion. The continuing growth registered by different forms of social media and amount of time people use social media per day, particularly in mobile creates a phenomenal platform to reach them and have your brand messages delivered. This combined with Remarketing capability and Suggestive ads (based on previous purchase, interest and what similar customers have purchased) does get results for marketers.
6. Paradigm Shift in the way of watching TV:
Today the way I watch TV has evolved multifold. 15 years back the only option was to watch a program I like was on Television with interruption advertising and I had to be physically be in front of the TV at the right time to watch the program. Though recording facilities were available they were cumbersome. Now, I record the TV shows I like on my set-top box, watch them at my convenience and I forward the Ads! Alternatively, I can look up on Netflix or YouTube depending on where they are available. Each of these scenarios, makes the TV advertising irrelevant for me as an individual and to everyone who is making the shift.
2017 is clearly a big inflection point for Digital Advertising. What are you waiting for? We suggest you to start planning and strategizing your actions for the new year and staying on top of the market!
I would love to hear your views.. If you have a different perspective on this or would want to make additions to the above article, kindly post your views in the comments below. Let’s get set for the next big thing together!
