Television advertising is still a contender, but for anyone looking at the growth projections, digital ad spending is where it’s at for 2015.
According to a recent forecast from Strategy Analytics, digital advertising in the U.S. will grow 13 percent in 2015. That would represent a 3.2 percent increase in total ad spend to $186.6 billion.
“By comparison, the TV ad spend is expected to grow only 1.7 percent, while print advertising will decline 7.9 percent year-over-year,” noted Multichannel News in its coverage of the forecast. “The year’s digital ad increases will be fueled by search (up 45 percent), social media (31 percent), video (29 percent) and mobile (20 percent). The digital growth alone, however, is not enough to bolster traditional media revenue, which Strategy Analytics expects to be 0.2 percent lower in 2015 than in 2014.”
On the other hand, there is a presidential election firing up soon — oh, and the summer Olympics. Both are good for the advertising business.
“Despite digital’s best efforts, the drop in traditional ad revenues means we’ll see fairly modest growth in overall U.S. ad revenues in 2015,” said Michael Goodman, co-author of the report. “[We] will have to wait for more significant growth in 2016, courtesy of the U.S. presidential elections and summer Olympics.”
Interesting (though not huge) growth areas? The report cites outdoor (up 4.8 percent), cinema advertising (3.4 percent) and radio (1.8 percent).
Report co-author Leika Kawasaki is looking ahead. By 2018, she believes, the TV share of ad spend will drop to 40 percent while digital mushrooms to 35 percent.
“TV’s declining share is less about ad dollars flowing out of TV and more about dollars flowing into digital from print and radio,” Kawaski said. “TV networks will see little, if any, real decline in revenue, just a shift in the source from linear TV ads to online video.”
The biggest loser? Print advertising.
The Strategy Analytics data suggests that print advertising could fall to $20.3 billion by 2018. That’s less than a third of 2007 spend, a mere 10 percent market share.