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Digital advertising spend increased at the fastest rate for seven years together with UK digital advertising spend up 16.4% to over #8.6 billion, according to the latest Internet Marketing Bureau UK Digital Adspend report, conducted by PwC.
The increase is the greatest as a 17.1% rise in 2008 and follows a 12 percent gain in the amount of internet-enabled devices in each household. The report asserts that this currently stands to 8.3 per household with connected TVs seeing the biggest increase in ownership at 27 percent. Smartphones ranked at 21 percent whilst laptops at 18% outgrew pills. The most popular online device was proven to be smartphones at 2.1 per family.
Mobile made up over three-quarters of digital ad spend growth, up by 60.3% year on year to #2.63 billion, or 30.5% of electronic advertising.
Video advertising spend also saw solid growth up by 50.7% to #711 million. To # 353 million pay rose on video. Content and native advertisements spend, such as advertorials and ads from social media news feeds, rose by 49.9 percent to #776 million, while spend on social media websites meanwhile grew by 45 percent to #1.25 billion — or 41 percent of banner/video display ad spend.
“The growing variety of devices people use to go online has helped electronic advertising spend hit the next gear as advertisers seem to achieve and time spent online increases,” states Tim Elkington, chief strategy officer at the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau. “Smartphones will be the important driving force for this, as people increasingly rely on them for actions they used to do on backgroundcomputer, from hunting and shopping to social and viewing video.”
The report revealed that display advertising spend for the year grew by 24.5 percent to some 35% or #3.03 billion share of electronic ad spend. The programmatic share rose to 60 percent in 2015 from 47% in 2014. Direct sales feel 47 percent to 37 percent of screen advertisements.
“We’re seeing a three-pronged shift in media proprietor strategy in regards to selling display ads,” says Dan Bunyan, senior director at PwC. “There’s a change in earnings from networks to Real-Time-Bidding markets, a shift from lead to programmatic direct, and you from open to private market areas. It’s almost gone full circle to market in. We predict programmatic will accounts for 80-90% of screen ad sales by 2019.”
The study demonstrated that consumer products companies were the largest banner and video display ad spenders in 2015 — responsible for 18% of spend. It was followed by travel and transport at 13.4% and retailers at 13.3%.
