Advertising Spend Forecasts for 2017 and Beyond

According to Statista, global advertising spend is forecasted to be around USD $548 B in 2017.

With all of the different avenues through which advertising spend can be allocated, this enormous amount begs the question, which forms of advertising media are in, and which are out? Here, we will review the ad spend forecasts of 2017 for digital, television, print, over-the-air, and out-of-home advertising.

Table of Contents:

• Digital Advertising Forecast
• Television Advertising Forecast
• Print Advertising Forecast
• Terrestrial Radio Advertising Forecast
• Out-of-Home Advertising Forecast

Advertising Spend Forecasts:

Digital Advertising:

In 2016, Digital Advertising spend made up 36.7% of total, overall advertising spend at around USD $194.6 B. Compared to the prior year, this was a 7.1% gain in ad spend.This total is forecasted to nearly double to USD $335 B by 2020. According to eMarketer, mobile ad spending is the major driving force behind the growth of Digital Advertising.

It is important to note, however, that much of the growth within spending in the Digital Advertising space can be attributed to growth in advertising within Google and Facebook. To illustrate, ad spend within Facebook ballooned by 83% in 2016. Meanwhile, Priceline Group alone spent USD $3.5 Billion on PPC Advertising, with Google being its biggest advertising channel.

TV Advertising:

In 2016, USD $72 B was allocated to television, a 4.4% gain in ad spending towards television as compared to the previous year. With ad spend expected to be moved to digital advertising, it is forecasted that there will be a decline in TV’s overall share of advertising spend by 2021.

Within the television category itself, broadcast television has seen greater growth in ad spend when compared with cable television. However, this disparity in growth was tied back to sports and political activity last year, with the Olympics taking center stage in Q3, and the election activities setting networks ablaze in Q3 and Q4.

Print Advertising:

Print advertising spend, which comprises of magazine and newspaper budgets, is expected to continue trending downwards after 2017. It is forecasted that magazine ad spend will drop by 2.0%, and newspaper ad spend will drop by as much as 5.0%.

For newspaper companies, advertising generates more revenue than circulation, so the forecasted declines will require that they innovate quickly to grow their digital advertising capabilities to offset the print advertising losses.

Magazine companies who have bolstered their yearly revenues by offsetting losses in print through digital advertising sales, will see a relatively flat growth projection through 2020.

In recent years, many print companies began innovating their digital offerings in terms of audience targeting and variable placement offerings for ads, in the past years — examples are Fast Company, The Week, The Economist, and New York Times.

Terrestrial Radio:

As seen with print advertising, use of the more traditional forms of advertising (television, out of home, print, radio, and OOH) are seemingly becoming less popular.

While Terrestrial Radio advertising spend is not on the decline as is spend on newspaper and magazine advertising, the growth in over-the-air radio is forecasted to be very slight, at only 0.2%. In its annual Entertainment & Media Outlook report, PwC projected that the Terrestrial Radio market will be around USD $18.4 Billion in 2020.

Out-of-home:

Of the traditional media forms, out-of-home advertising spend looks to remain strong into the future. Out of home is expected to remain a valuable asset, and spend towards billboards is expected to rise 2.0% due to the digitization of billboards. By 2020, OOH ad revenues are expected to be USD $10.9 Billion.

Concluding Notes:

It is apparent that Digital Advertising is where advertisers are looking to spend the most money this year and in the coming years.

Digital Advertising’s constantly evolving landscape is likely a huge reason why much of ad spend being allocated towards it. With Virtual Reality on the rise, smarter AI bots like IBM’s Watson, and more granular customer segmentation and targeting capabilities on many platforms, who can blame advertisers for wanting a bigger piece of the Digital Advertising cake?

As with everything, a publisher’s best strategy here would be to innovate with the times, and to develop ways for their advertisers to reach their desired audiences through digital forms of media. The Chillproject offers a great tool that allows marketers to create more actionable advertising on Facebook. Check out Adchill here.