It is that time of year – time to touch on marketing budget allocation by media type, including digital ad dollars. The rapid shift in spending toward digital media continues and is creating a booming digital advertising market.
Rob Gonda - The Digital Advertising Landscape 2015
Ad Age just reported on Forrester’s latest projections for digital spending as follows…
“The pool of digital ad dollars is soon expected to rival current levels of TV spending, according to Forrester Research. U.S. interactive marketing spending will reach $76.6 billion by 2016, equal to TV spending this year, and will grab 35% of total ad budgets. That’s up from digital accounting for 19% of all spending in 2011.”
Last year about this time I reported on the “barbell” effect unfolding in the distribution of ad budgets. Forrester’s recent research seems to further underscore this trend – one where TV and digital spending are increasing while other media forms are caught in the middle and shrinking as slices of the pie (newspaper, print, etc.).
Two years ago I lamented that “advertisers continue to spend too little on digital media – by half.” Data from the middle to late “oughts” (~2004-2009) reflected digital ad budgets reaching only about half the levels of digital media consumption. In other words, consumers spent twice as much time with digital media as advertisers spent advertising with digital media.
If Forrester’s projections for 2016 are even close, digital spending will continue to be on a tear, nearly doubling every few years in its share of total ad budget. At this rate, digital ad spending may finally catch up with consumers’ share of attention to digital media.
Update: The Wall Street Journal’s online edition published a story today (9/21) underscoring the shift in spending to TV and digital. Even as TV audiences “scatter” TV is luring more spending and higher ad rates.
