Zenith has found no evidence that advertisers as a whole are shifting away from online advertising.
Indeed, it share of global advertising expenditure continues to rise rapidly and is expected to reach 40.2% this year, up from 37.6% in 2017.
Vittorio Bonori, Zenith’s global brand president, said: “We are observing sustained ROI from digital transformation.
“And we are now at the forefront of a transformation as brands shift budgets along the consumer journey, benefit from powerful algorithms and advanced machine learning techniques, and invest in new e-commerce solutions. This transformation is at the heart of driving brand growth.”
Zenith notes that globally, advertisers continue to increase the share of their budgets allocated to paid digital channels. According to the March 2018 edition of Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, published today(March 26), online advertising grew by 13.7% in 2017 to $204 billion. It accounted for 37.6% of global advertising expenditure in 2017, up from 34.3% in 2016, and will for the first time exceed 40% this year.
Significantly, in 2017 online advertising already accounted for more than 55% of ad spend in three markets (China, Sweden and the UK), so there is plenty of potential for further growth. By 2020, Zenith expects online advertising to account for 44.6% of global ad spend.
Yet despite this, Zenith also notes that the revenues of 14 listed ad tech companies grew five times faster than online revenues between 2010 and 2016.
Furthermore, confidence in the global ad market is currently improving rapidly and Zenith now expects it to grow by 4.6% this year, thanks in particular to improved economic growth in China and Argentina. This will by followed by 4.4% growth in 2019 and 4.3% in 2020.
Jonathan Barnard, Zenith’s head of forecasting and director of global intelligence, said: “The global ad market grew by 4.0% last year.
“After a jump in confidence, we now expect it to grow substantially faster this year, boosted by the Winter Olympics, football World Cup and US mid-term elections.”
