According to a study done by eMarketer, spending on digital advertising will outpace that of traditional marketing this year. Digital ad spending is projected to be about $130 billion or about 54% of total advertising dollars. Traditional advertising, including TV, magazines and newspapers will total about $109 billion.
It is probably no surprise that the biggest players in digital advertising are Facebook and Google with a combined market share of 60 percent. However, Amazon continues to challenge these giants with an expected ad growth of more than 50% in 2019. Notably, mobile advertising will continue its rise with its share of digital ad spending, totaling around $87 billion.
The trend towards digital marketing is expected to continue to skyrocket in the next few years.
The top echelons of many businesses today are staffed by older managers and owners. These people grew up in the era where advertising was done on television, in newspapers and magazines. They are often reticent to try what they consider “new” modes of advertising. The tried and true methods of traditional advertising are far more comfortable.
According to eMarketer, the shift to digital platforms makes it imperative for advertisers to replace the disappearing revenues from traditional media advertising by turning to digital platforms. However, his means a lot more than putting up a website and forgetting it, posting occasionally to Facebook or Twitter, or putting up boring ads on random digital platforms.
Today, advertisers must consider the how their customers want to interact with them. In most cases, this means keeping websites current with new and valuable content; having a robust presence on relevant social platforms in order to assure that posts are seen by as many potential customers as possible. More importantly, it means they must consider allocating a larger percentage of their advertising budgets to compelling ads on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google and even Amazon. It also means tracking results of their efforts with the right analytics. For the beauty of social advertising is the ability to gauge who is interacting with your brand and how they want to be approached.