Although spending on advertising will continue to be high in the U.S., there’s a struggle that needs to be overcome.
eMarketer recently reported that paid media spending will see a 5.1 percent growth, and while that’s still progress, it’s a little slow compared to what advertisers spend on routine media formats such as radio and television. Overall spending for U.S. media is expected to reach $192 billion for the year, driven behind such events as the presidential election and the Rio Olympics this summer.
The report, titled U.S. Ad Spending: eMarketer’s Estimates for 2016, indicates that conditions for economic growth aren’t as strong as they used to be, leading to smaller estimates than most companies expected. That said, there’s still room for the digital market to show growth.
Digital media will see the biggest growth in ad spending share over the next few years, going from 32.6 percent this past year to 44.9 percent by 2020. TV will see a slight drop by five percent in this time frame, while print will follow closely behind with about a four percent drop.
While TV continues to be the leader of total media ad spending at the moment, digital is quickly gaining, and coming very close to overlapping it for this year. We’ll see it overtake completely by 2017, and it’ll have a near $40 billion advantage by 2020, powered by entertainment services like Netflix and Hulu.
However, the bigger picture here is how media ad spending will increase overall, as the total is expected to jump from $192.02 billion for this year, up to $234.25 billion by 2020. So even though the numbers may be seeing a slight lull at the moment, the future appears wide open.
