Projected to account for nearly 75% of all budgets in 2021, Digital Media continues to grow while traditional advertising slips.
According to the Interactive Ad Bureau, 2021 is on trend to being a year lead by digital advertising, but some technical issues like the blocking of web cookies have scared many media buyers and hindered their optimism about the upcoming year.
The IAB originally predicted that the digital revenue forecast was going to slow in late 2019, but they have soon changed their predictions. They now conclude that digital media will claim upwards of 71% of all marketing budgets in the next year. Social, Paid Search, Display and Video are the top four sub-sectors and will be a major portion of the projected spend. This new data is a 14% increase year-over-year in comparison to this year’s estimated digital spends.
IAB CEO David Cohen says that Digital Media’s growth has “democratized access to advertising.” The linear television realm has always been dominated by the world’s largest advertisers, while platforms like YouTube and Facebook have become the bread and butter marketing access point for upwards of 10 million small and mid-sized business.
The Marketplace Outlook Survey’s digital expectations exceed other ad forecasts, which estimates that 50%-60% of all media transactions in 2021 will be digital spend.
“We’ve seen programmatic growing quite nicely. It has now eclipsed direct buys in the digital ecosystem,” David Cohen added.
While on the other hand, Linear advertising is expected to take a hit in the next year upwards of a 5% drop to account for only 29% of the industry’s spending according to the IAB. They also found that 60% of digital buyers intend to shift their linear TV spend over to connected TV in the upcoming year.
The IAB’s survey group gave a multitude of reasons for their change in optimism for the upcoming 2021 year including the recovering economy, the return of out-of-home entertainment, improved omnichannel experience and increases in e-commerce.
There are a few things in the industry that are causing some media buyers to step back and reanalyze their approach without the use of web cookies, sufficient first-party data and lack of cross-platform measurements being registered correctly.
Advertisers have had to adapt and learn this year, which is reflecting on their plans for 2021. Most media buyers are expecting a 6% increase in their year-over-year spending and have identified their upcoming annual budgets.
“Flexibility remains the name of the game,” Cohen adds in regards to the sales cycles that have been constantly adjusting over the past year and noting that their estimations will continue to include the most up to date information regarding the industry’s future with each change.
If you are looking for help in setting up and adjusting your media campaigns for next year, please don’t hesitate to contact us here at Farfetched Studios LLC. We are experts and stay up to date on all marketing channels, let us develop a campaign that fits this ever changing media ecosystem.