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Global digital advertising market to hit $179.77bn in 2021
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The global digital advertising market size 2020 was $155.53 billion and it is expected to grow to $179.77 billion this year at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%.

That’s according to a new report from The Business Research Company, which says the growth is mainly due to the companies rearranging their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges.

The market is expected to reach $281.32 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 11.8%.

Along with interactions in the ads themselves, the report says digital advertising companies are increasingly adopting conversational interfaces or chat box to increase speed and productivity while dealing with common consumer issues.

End users of financial institutions have become extremely reliant on conversational interfaces to provide 24/7 service, instant responses to queries, and quick complaint resolution for providing answers to queries effectively. Conversational interfaces also provide an easy and economical way for organisations in different sectors to receive customer feedback.

The report cites companies such as Starbucks, which are increasingly adopting conversational chat box to allow users to order through its MyBarista application via auditory message, which works faster than the traditional methods.

It says the global digital advertising market is highly saturated, with small number of large players. The top ten competitors in the market made up to 64.53% of the total market in 2020. Major players in the market include Google Ads, Facebook, Alibaba, Amazon, Tencent, Baidu, Microsoft, Verizon, Twitter, and Sina Weibo.

North America accounts for the largest digital advertising market share 2021, having had 32.0% of the total in 2020. It was followed by Asia Pacific, Western Europe and then the other regions. Going forward, according to TBRC digital marketing industry growth statistics, the fastest-growing regions in the digital advertising market will be the Africa and the Middle East, where growth will be at CAGRs of 18.4% and 16.7% respectively during 2020-2025. These will be followed by South America and Eastern Europe, where the markets are expected to grow at CAGRs of 16.7% and 16.6% respectively.

ASA publishes latest study into restricted ads in children’s media
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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has published the findings from its fourth monitoring sweep, as part of a year-long project to identify and tackle age-restricted ads appearing in children’s online media.

Whilst the overwhelming majority of age-restricted ads are targeted responsibly in online media, targeting audiences heavily weighted (75 %+) to adult audiences, a minority end up in children’s online media.

Advertisers placing age-restricted ads online are required, under the Advertising Code, to take care to target their ads away from child audiences. In particular, that means websites and YouTube channels designed for children or that attract a disproportionately high child audience cannot carry age-restricted ads.

The latest report continued what the ASA calls CCTV-style scrutiny of online ads for: gambling, alcohol, e-cigarettes and tobacco, slimming and weight control products and food and soft drinks classified as high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS products).

Since undertaking the monitoring, the UK Government has announced new restrictions on the advertising of HFSS products on TV and online, which are due to take effect from the beginning of 2023. That policy shift does not change the ASA’s responsibility to take action against HFSS ads placed, in breach of the current rules, in children’s media.

Between January and March 2021, using monitoring tools to capture age-restricted ads served on a sample of 49 websites and 12 YouTube channels attracting a disproportionately high child audience, the ASA found that:

  • Overall, 158 age-restricted ads broke the advertising rules; and
  • In total, 41 advertisers placed age-restricted ads in 33 websites and 8 YouTube channels aimed at, or attracting a disproportionately large, child audience.

A breakdown of ads by product category that broke the rules reveals:

Alcohol:

  • 7 alcohol ads by 3 advertisers on 8 websites

Gambling:

  • 29 ads by 3 advertisers on 17 websites

HFSS:

  • 117 ads by 31 advertisers on 31 websites and 8 YouTube channels

Weight reduction:

  • 5 ads by 4 advertisers on 4 websites

Smoking:

  • No ads for e-cigarettes or tobacco products were picked up during this monitoring period

The ASA says its preliminary inspection of the data suggests that the majority of advertisers who it identified breaking the rules in earlier monitoring sweeps have not reoffended. It has warned the advertisers who we have caught in this latest sweep to review and, as necessary, amend their practices to ensure they target future ads responsibly.

Throughout the last year, harnessing innovative monitoring technology as part of a five-year strategy, More Impact Online, has proved effective in helping the ASA identify and tackle irresponsibly placed ads for age restricted products at scale and speed to better protect children.

IAB welcomes ‘opportunities’ from third-party cookie phase-out
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The IAB has welcomed Google’s reaction to the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) investigation into internet giant’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, asserting that it creates an opportunity to ‘reset’ the ad-funded web.

Back in January, the CMA launched an investigation into Google’s Privacy Sandbox in response to concerns that Google’s plans for the removal of third-party cookies from Chrome and its introduction of alternatives could impede competition in digital advertising markets.

At the time, Google welcomed the development and has described it as an “opportunity to engage with a regulator with the mandate to promote competition for the benefit of consumers”. 

Google has now announced a range of binding commitments to address the CMA’s concerns. These include: 

  • That it will work with the CMA to resolve concerns and develop agreed parameters for the testing of new proposals. Google will also provide transparency around the timetable, as well as a clear notice period for changes.
  • Once third-party cookies are phased out, Google’s ad products will not access synced Chrome browsing histories (or data from other user-facing Google products) in order to track users to target or measure ads on third party web inventory.
  • As the Privacy Sandbox proposals are developed and implemented, that work will not give preferential treatment or advantage to Google’s advertising products or to Google’s own sites

You can read the full list of commitments here. The CMA has now launched a consultation on whether to accept Google’s commitments, which you can respond to by submitting written representations to Angela Nissyrios and Simon Deeble at 50972-Consultation@cma.gov.uk by 8 July 2021 at 5pm.

IAB UK’s CEO Jon Mew said: “At the IAB, we have always been really clear that the phasing out of third-party cookies is an opportunity to reset the ad-funded web for the better, which is why we have laid out clear principles that we believe any viable User ID solutions must meet. I think that the CMA’s investigation into Privacy Sandbox and Google’s commitments to address its concerns about the potential impact on competition are an important and valuable part of this process. 

“The commitments  allow the wider industry to have confidence that Google’s proposals are being developed in a way that takes into account both competition and privacy objectives, with the benefit of regulatory oversight brought by the CMA. The phasing out of third-party cookies is the most seismic shift that the digital ad industry has ever experienced and it’s only right that developments in this space are subject to appropriate scrutiny.”

Synergy between CTV and digital devices drives ad effectiveness, according to VDX.tv study
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By VDX.tv

Your smartphone is a computer. And your TV, too. Nowadays consumers expect that their computers work together and provide a seamless experience, with cohesive and consistent messaging across screens. Marketers need to understand this synergy across screens and start to embrace the opportunity it provides.   

Streaming is an ideal way for advertisers to begin a lasting brand relationship. The big screen offers an immersive experience that helps create brand awareness and association. On the web, consumers lean forward. They’re curious, open-minded, and motivated. Streaming ads prompt inspiration, but they need to be followed by interactive, browser-based ads that facilitate exploration. 

VDX.tv’s research, “The Bigger Picture: Why Effective Video Advertising Requires a Synergy Across CTV, Desktop & Mobile Devices”, found that consumers are 2.5 times more likely to remember a brand advertised on the big screen than any other medium. The research also found that following a CTV impression with a desktop ad caused brand opinion to jump by a third, on average. For carefully considered purchases such as travel, auto, and even mattresses, purchase intent can more than double when CTV impressions are followed by interactive web impressions. A majority of respondents in the study rated these holistic, cross-screen campaigns as being more relevant, informative, and engaging than single-channel efforts.

Overall, the research noted that on average, the addition of CTV to desktop and mobile drove a 149.6% lift in brand awareness versus desktop and mobile alone. Likewise adding CTV to desktop and mobile resulted in a 36.9% lift in brand opinion and a 24.8% lift in purchase intent. 

Altogether, we call this the “Halo Effect”. 

A brand halo is earned by a marketing strategy that includes every screen in the house. A halo forms when computers are used to their full potential and in synchronicity with each other. Having your campaign meet each moment in a consumer journey means planning for consistent, responsive messaging across experiences that are adapted for each screen.

Where is your halo? Closer than you think.

You can download the study here.

Global online Advertising Expected to Reach $1,089bn
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A rise in expenditure on digital media across various industries and a surge in popularity of streaming platforms is driving the growth of the global internet advertising market, according to new data.

A new report from Allied Market Research pegged the global online advertising market at $319 billion in 2019, growing to hit $1,089 billion by 2027, equivalent to a CAGR of 17.2% over the forecast period.

The report cautions that rising adoption of ad-blockers has restrained the growth to some extent, but that the emergence of advertising automation and a rise in adoption of identity-based pay-per-click (PPC) marketing are projected to pave the way for lucrative opportunities in the coming years.

Specifically, it says the impact of COVID-19:

  • Increased use of social media leading to rising drift to resort to social media platforms to endorse various media content with the target audience, which boosted the global market for Internet advertising.
  • That trend is likely to continue post-pandemic as well, since advertising of media and entertainment content over Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram has almost become a new drift in the recent times.

The global internet advertising market report is analyzed across platform type, ad format, pricing/revenue model, enterprise size, industry vertical, and region. Based on platform type, the mobile segment accounted for nearly two-thirds of the total market share in 2019 and is expected to rule the roost by 2027. The same segment would also manifest the fastest CAGR of 18.9% during the forecast period. 

Based on pricing model, the performance-based segment garnered more than half of the total market revenue in 2019 and is expected to lead the trail by 2027. At the same time, the hybrid segment would manifest the fastest CAGR of 22.7% throughout the forecast period.

Based on geography, North America held the share in 2019, holding around two-fifths of the global market. The market across Asia-Pacific, on the other hand, would cite the fastest CAGR of 21.6% from 2020 to 2027. The report also analyzes the market growth across LAMEA and Europe.

Using emotion in advertising increases the sales of high-price and high-quality products
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The use of emotion in TV adverts increases sales of high-quality and high-priced products, according to new research by emlyon business school.

However, if you’re trying to increase the sales of a low-quality and low-priced product, informative adverts are more likely to be successful, say researchers.

The study, by Ivan Guitart, Associate Professor of Marketing, and his colleague Stefan Stremersch, Professor of Marketing at the Erasmus School of Economics, looked into how informational and emotional appeals in television adverts influence online search and sales. They found that the impact of these appeals depends on the price and quality of the product.

The authors analysed the volume of online search, sales, and the content and expenditure of more than 2,300 ads promoting 144 cars during a period of four years.

The findings reveal that for high-price and high-quality products, an increase in emotional content in adverts led to more sales and online searches than an increase in informational content.

In contrast, for low-price and low-quality products, the use of information in adverts was more effective at increasing sales than the use of emotions. However, this is at the expense of the number of online searches these products get.

If managers of low-quality products want to increase the volume of online search their products receive, they should design adverts with more emotional content.

Professor Guitart said: “Managers of low price and low-quality products need to decide whether they want to use high level of emotional content to increase online search at the expense of sales, or use high level of informational content to increase sales, at the expense of online searches.”

The researchers say increasing online searches is an important objective because the more consumers learn about products the more likely they are to talk about them and even purchase them.

The findings of the study give insights and advice for marketing managers in their advertising strategies. Marketing managers of high-quality and high-price product should appeal to emotions if they want their adverts to drive sales, while marketing managers of low-quality and low-price products should highlight the practical applications of their product in order to boost sales.

The study was published in the Journal of Marketing Research.

The secret sauce of successful paid digital marketing
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By Steve Plimmer, ESV Digital

Marketing as a whole has some core prerequisites to be successful (measurable goals, a united and clear message to convey, smart budgeting). Paid Digital Marketing is no different but a unique strength of the digital space is a central factor in making all forms of digital advertising work. It’s not keywords, it’s not bids, it’s not directly being able to track and attribute conversions – for the latter, many advertisers don’t care about conversions so much. It is audiences.

Audience tracking, targeting and managing is Paid Digital Marketing’s secret sauce

There are certainly those who may claim the website is the real common denominator but you can have the best website in the world; if the users visiting it are low quality (poor intent, the wrong type of user in any way) it can’t get you results.

It is true that below-par websites will generally perform poorly but they’ll perform far above their fighting weight with good audience strategy.

Many advertisers are starting to get to grips with this fact, as PPC Keywords get diluted and many forms of control on search, shopping and display recede, because the biggest remaining lever of control (and insight) that seems to be surviving all this change is audiences.

What do we mean by audiences?

When speaking about audiences, I’m referring to literally any aspect of a user’s profile or behaviour that can be categorised, measured and targeted. This can include:

  • Location
  • Device
  • New or returning visitor
  • Prospective or returning customer
  • Engagement behaviour with the site or ads (e.g. video ads)
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Life stage/event
  • Content topics of interest
  • Occupation

This is by no means an exhaustive list and these are all beyond the basic audience segment of those who search on a search engine and self-select to be an audience member of “people who searched for product x.”

Many of these have long been used by Facebook advertisers or on LinkedIn but now marketers have a host of powerful options on both Google and Bing Ads plus other Display networks.

Uses

What is the value and what are the potential applications for all these audiences? Before anything else, you need to look at the data you have pertaining to these audience types. Without this we cannot know if it’s salient to even do anything with age groups, for instance. Maybe all ages convert about the same rate. And don’t forget to review how they may impact your CLV (Customer Lifetime Value).

To gather data about audiences that are not sourced internally, you can sometimes just run a report with these segments – normally the most generic user properties, like demographics or location – but for the more advanced and granular audience types, you may be able to add those audiences as “observed” audiences for a time to gather data. Google Ads is a great example of this. Once you have allowed time to pass and the data to accumulate, you may be surprised by some audience correlations and conversions on your site.

Once you have an idea of where performance opportunities lie, you can then decide how to segment targeting, auto-bidding and messaging to address them.

Not all audience uses must be hard-data-led, however. They can also be used simply to segment messaging. Decide what USP of your offering will ring bells with a certain audience (or layered audience) but also position the brand and set an appropriate call-to-action, imagery etc. In addition, you can identify your core target audience per your business plan and shape your strategy, in part, that way. If nothing else, it’s a good way to focus your budget on the user profiles through which you fundamentally want to gain market share.

You can leverage your CRM data to segment existing customers in a limitless number of ways and target them (subject to audience size) in PPC and Facebook/Instagram.

An extra bonus of the latter is that some platforms can take your audience and make look-a-like audiences to expand your penetration of people similar to those who convert on your site. You can take this further by buying email address lists of curated people and upload them as customer match lists.

Conclusion

When you come to choosing digital marketing platforms to use, ask yourself (and the platform in question) what audience targeting features it offers. Then ensure audience segmenting, messaging and management is core to your digital marketing strategy. This may involve many internal stakeholders and partners to do it right (web development, app development, data warehouses, data analysis, CRM teams and so on) but without making efforts to leverage audiences your competitors are going to eventually eat your lunch.

For more information about ESV Digital’s search marketing strategy, get in touch. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest updates.

TabMo’s drive-to-store ad campaigns ‘increase in-store traffic by 70%’
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Drive-to-store advertising campaigns activated through TabMo’s cross-channel platform Hawk show a 70% average uplift of in-store traffic.

This is a key finding of the first benchmark survey to analyse the results of campaigns using TabMo’s In-Store Impact, launched earlier this year. 

The solution provides real-time data on the increase in physical store visits generated by specific advertising activity.

Other key findings of the study include:

  • 14% of the (ad) clicks recorded converted into store visits
  • An average in-store visit costs $2.62 (in terms of ad impressions)
  • The average distance driven to the store after being exposed to an ad is 9km
  • Uplift for in-store traffic was highest in Germany (127%), following by Italy (106%), Belgium (74%), the UK (68%) and France (63%).
  • The beauty industry recorded a 271% increase in in-store footfall as a result of advertising campaigns; this figure is 145% for style and 126% for home and garden.  High tech was the lowest at 13%.
  • The food and drink sector had the best visit rate per impression at 0.30% (meaning generating a store visit required an average of 333 ad impressions).

TabMo analysed the results of 240 drive-to-store advertising campaigns activated through Hawk and carried out in European markets between 21 April and 7 October 2020.

Campaigns were segmented into the 15 industry sectors defined by the IAB: beauty; style and fashion; home and garden; automotive; business; grocery stores; food and drinks, travel; alcohol; hobbies and interests; luxury; arts and entertainment; health; real estate/property; and high tech.

Renaud Biet, co-founder at TabMo, says: “Five months after launching our cross-channel drive-to-store solution, In-Store Impact, we have looked at a number of campaigns across various markets to build out solid performance benchmarks around drive-to-store advertising. In-Store Impact enables marketers to track real-time footfall uplift data tied directly to cross-channel advertising activity activated on Hawk by TabMo’s platform.”

STUDY: TV THE ‘LEAST RISKY’ MARKETING CHANNEL
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Linear TV advertising and Broadcaster VOD (BVOD) are the least risky forms of advertising, delivering just 20% of variance compared with the median return.

That’s according to research from TV marketing body Thinkbox, Gain Theory, MediaCom and Wavemaker, released to support a new cross-media optimisation tool based on its findings.

The ‘Demand Generation’ study is an econometric analysis of £1.4 billion of media spend by 50 brands across 10 forms of advertising over three years. It offers wide-ranging advice to marketers on how to maximise short-term advertising return without sacrificing sustained base growth. 

The study has also isolated the principle variables that impact advertising effectiveness, and these have been used to create ‘The Demand Generator’, a new tool that enables marketers to determine the optimal advertising media mix specific to their business and its objectives.

Key findings include:-

  • The variability of returns differs significantly across different forms of advertising
  • Linear TV advertising and Broadcaster VOD (BVOD) are the least risky forms of advertising, delivering just 20% of variance compared with the median return
  • By comparison, Online display, Cinema, Social media and Print advertising all have a variability of +/- 60% compared with the median return  
  • TV generates the highest ‘multiplier effect’ across all other channels
  • TV boosts the performance of other media channels used in a campaign by up to 54% 
  • Print, for example, boosts other channels’ performance by up to 13%
  • The average ‘multiplier effect’ across all channels is around 8%
  • This is the highest of any pure ‘demand generating’ channel, the next best is Print with 10%
  • Generic search, which straddles ‘demand generation’ and ‘demand fulfilment’ and is TV’s natural partner, delivers an average of 29% of media-driven sales within 2 weeks
  • Due to the sustained effect of advertising, during the following 6-18 months, TV goes on to deliver a further 2.4 times more sales than it generated in the first 2 weeks
  • Generic search goes on to deliver 0.8 times more sales than in the first 2 weeks and Print 1.2 times more

The new tool supported by the research – www.thinkbox.tv/demandgenerator – offers practical advice on optimal media mixes based on the key variables that influence advertising effectiveness uncovered in the research. These were identified as a brand’s:-

  • Category
  • Budget
  • Brand size (annual revenue)
  • Appeal (e.g. mass market or niche)
  • % of sales that take place online 
  • Desire to minimise risk

The Demand Generator also forecasts the likely business results of following its guidance, both in terms of incremental revenue/profit per year and revenue/profit return on investment (ROI).

Matt Hill, Research and Planning Director at Thinkbox, said: “Often we do some research, release the findings and that’s that. So it’s wonderful to create something tangible and practical based on such robust insight. We hope The Demand Generator will be a helpful springboard for the many brands that don’t already do econometric analyses of their media performance. They can tailor it to their exact needs to find the best place to start from when deciding their media mix. With marketers increasingly adopting a zero-based budgeting approach, having a tool like this should provide a great evidence-based foundation on which to build their decisions.”

Jane Christian, Managing Partner, Head of Business Science, MediaCom: “Demand Generation provides the industry with the broadest view of media performance to date. It goes under the bonnet of what factors drive the optimal media plan for a brand, with The Demand Generator helping advertisers to tailor the result specifically for their brand.”

Image by Pexels from Pixabay 

UK ad spend to hit £21.8 billion in 2019, but growth slows
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Advertising is on the up, with UK spend expected to increase to £21.8 billion, up from £20.5 billion in 2018.

That’s according to the latest forecasts by media investment group, GroupM, which predict 6.1 percent growth for 2019, down from 7.8 percent in 2018, with this year aided by decent underlying growth, admittedly with a slight decline.

Brexit still occupies management bandwidth, which in turn affects ad-budget setting with the potential to lead to reductions.

Digital advertising continues to grow at around 11 percent for 2019, accounting for more than 60 percent of total UK advertising, of which over half is search.

Digital media ‘pure plays’ represent the largest group of ad sellers, with Facebook and Google accounting for around three-quarters of the figure on a gross basis.

After hitting £4.5billion, television accounts for around 20 percent of media investment and remains a stable medium in terms of advertising, with spending left unchanged in 2018 over 2017, with levels set to remain for a 24 month period.

Radio also appears set to hold on to its revenue base this year, followed by closer to +2 percent growth next year, along with Out-of-Home (OOH), digital formats which are becoming increasingly important, accounting for half of spending in OOH during 2018, with further share gains still to come especially as more automation takes root, including the emergence of performance-based targeting and data-driven trading. For now, GroupM forecasts growth exceeding +3 percent in each of 2019 and 2020.

The losers in the advertising game continue to be print, with newspapers and magazines now accounting for less than 10 percent of media investment combined in 2019, down from more than 50 percent in a 15-year period.

Image by Falkenpost from Pixabay