Dive Brief:
- eMarketer has forecast TV ad spending will make up 35.8% of the total U.S. ad spend next year while digital will account for 38.4% of the total spend, making 2017 the first year that digital is expected to surpass TV.
- The news for the TV doesn’t get better through the 2020 forecast: eMarketer sees TV’s share drop below one-third of the total media spend for the first time in the U.S.
- Overall spending on TV will continue to grow, eMarketer predicts, but at a dramatically lower rate than expected growth in digital spending.
Dive Insight:
Digital is quickly overtaking TV as the biggest advertising channel, with many advertisers shifting their ad dollars away from TV and toward digital. Research from Standard Media Index from last year on video advertising found broadcast spending down 2% and cable spending up 1%, while digital grew an impressive 28%.
“We still expect positive growth for TV ad spend, driven by political advertising and the summer Olympics,” said eMarketer Senior Forecasting Analyst Martín Utreras. “However, we see more ad dollars flowing to digital as a way of optimizing spending in what may be a challenging economic year.”
In dollars, TV spending is expected to hit $72.01 billion in 2017, compared to $77.37 billion for digital. While the overall spending numbers are still in the same ballpark, digital is growing at a much faster rate than TV, with digital expected to grow 15.4% this year compared to TV’s 2.5%. Mobile is the main driver of growth, making up a 63.4% share of all digital ad spending.
“As consumers continue to increase engagement with mobile devices for daily activities and content consumption, marketers will further integrate all marketing activities—including advertising—to the mobile category,” said Utreras in the same eMarketer article.
