Who’s the advertising giant in the UK market?
According to data shared this week by eMarketer, Google will remain the UK’s top ranked digital ad publisher by a wide margin.
The Internet search behemoth is expected to take in roughly 40 percent of the UK digital ad spend annually through at least 2016. In addition, eMarketer estimates that Google will increase net digital revenues in the UK by 16 percent this year, an upward revision it based on the bigger than anticipated Google earnings there reported in Q1 2014.
“Growth in Google’s display ad business, which will net £556 million ($868.8 million) this year, according to our estimates, will dwarf that on the search side for the remainder of the forecast period,” says eMarketer.
Search will still make up the bulk of the company’s ad earnings. The company’s net search revenues are expected to top £2.37 billion ($3.70 billion) in 2014, accounting for 61.7 percent of the UK search ad market and nearly one-third of the country’s digital ad market.
However, a diversified field of smaller search publishers will nibble at Google’s perceived monopoly. Analysts anticipate that its share of search ad spending will shrink slightly through 2016 as the search ad market becomes more competitive, more diverse, and more aggressive.
For instance, Google has a committed rival in Facebook, which will earn 22.1 percent of UK display ad revenues in 2014—just 1 percentage point less, according to eMarketer analysts. But they also expect Google to grow display revenues more rapidly than Facebook in 2015, pulling the company further ahead.
Twitter, meanwhile, will get just 3.7 percent of display ad outlays in the UK this year.
“Overall, eMarketer estimates that Twitter will earn £96.9 million ($151.4 million) this year in the UK, of which more than £90 million ($140.8 million) will come from ads—more than double last year’s ad earnings,” says eMarketer.
Advertising will continue to account for the lion’s share of Twitter’s UK revenues through 2016, when eMarketer projects ads will bring in over £206 million ($322.7 million) for the social network.
It should be noted that eMarketer’s projections for digital ad revenues for major ad publishers measure net digital ad revenues after traffic acquisition costs paid to partner sites.