When it comes to driving targeted traffic to your pages there are few things as fast and effective as digital advertising. Many marketers spend a significant portion of their advertising budget on this type of ads, and it really starts to add up over time. In fact, according to a new report from eMarketers, marketers will spend about $58.6 Billion in this type of advertising in 2015. This is a record breaking amount.
The report, titled “Digital Ad Spending Benchmarks by Industry” breaks down where the money is coming from, which can be very important. Industries that have a large amount of digital ad spend already, for example, will likely have higher prices per click or view. Having a good idea of the amount of money in each industry is also important if your business displays any type of digital advertising as an income stream.
Breakdown of Industry Spend
Here are the key pieces of data concerning which industries are spending how much on their digital advertising.
- Retail is responsible for 22% of all digital ad spend. They spend $6.7 Billion on mobile advertising and $1.6 Billion on video ads.
- Automotive industries contribute 12.5% of digital ad spend. They account for $1.1 billion in video ads and $3.4 Billion in mobile ads.
- Financial services contribute 12.3% to all of digital ads with $3.5 Billion in mobile ads and $1.7 Billion in programmatic ads.
- Telecom accounts for 11.1% of the total digital ad economy.
- Consumer products are 8.5%
- Travel is 8.3%
- Consumer electronics is 7.6% of the digital ads
- Media is 5.8%
- Entertainment comes in at 4.8%
- Healthcare is just 2.8%
This leaves the remaining 4.5% spread out over ‘other’ industries. It is incredible to see just how much money is being spent across these industries on digital advertising. Keep in mind that digital ads didn’t even exist just a couple of decades ago.
The principal analyst at eMarketer, Victoria Petrock, said “While digital ad growth remains the story for all industries, it’s not one-size-fits-all. Nuances among sectors reflect a variety of trends in the ways each industry targets consumers and closes sales.”
This is an important and insightful comment by Petrock and is something marketers should take note of. Basically what she means is that video ads, for example, may perform well for the entertainment industry (movie trailers) and car sales, but they likely don’t translate quite as easily for telecom. On the other hand, programmatic ads still do well with consumer packaged goods, but retail doesn’t use them quite as much as they used to.
Whatever your business model is, make sure you are documenting what type of digital ad spend you are making and how it is performing. Making adjustments to ensure you get the best possible results is essential to getting the best return on investment.
