As consumer spend ever greater amounts of time with digital media, it appears more and more advertisers are following suit.
Per a story from the Wall Street Journal, new data from Standard Media Index indicates that digital ad spending is on the rise, increasing by 16 percent in the U.S. between October 2014 and June 2015. This shows that more brands and marketers are getting behind digital means, while slightly moving away from traditional television.
The agency, which tracks 80 percent of overall U.S. agency spending, estimated that digital ad spending was up $3 billion for those months from the previous year, including about $1 billion in “organic” growth.
It also states that $1.1 billion of national TV ad dollars, $400 million in local TV and syndication spending, $350 million of print ad dollars and $150 million of radio spending moved to digital for those months. The chart below shows this in easier-to-read fashion.
However, that doesn’t mean television advertising is in any danger — far from it. Standard Media Index reported that advertisers spent an approximate $25.5 billion on national TV and $6.4 billion on local and syndicated television over those months, compared to $22 billion spent on digital. So it’s not going away anytime soon — it just has some healthy competition with digital.
Still, more and more advertisers are starting to see the conventional means of advertising directly to an audience with digital, as their ads are usually up-front compared to being saved for the usual commercial breaks. And this investment is likely to continue in the years ahead, and streaming and digital channels gain more ground.
The report concludes by confirming this theory, stating that many marketers showed interest in investing even more money in digital ads, provided a better metric system was put in place to measure their return on investment, and see whether online ads provide any leverage on purchases.
