Dive Brief:

• Fitbit led the fitness wearables category with the most spending on advertising in 2014, according to new report from Kantar Media, spending about $21.6 million on media spanning across TV, magazines and the Web. 
• Trailing behind Fitbit were Garmin with $18.7 million, and Samsung with $11.6 million in ad spending. The same report said those three companies accounted for about three-quarters of all advertising spending in the category.
• Fitbit has captured about 68% of the fitness-tracker market, NPD Group reports.

Dive Insight: 

The wearables market is in an interesting point in the arc of its story.

The idea that wearables can be valuable has caught on, but it's still seen as more of a novelty than a necessity -- in the way that smartphones have become. Fitbit's commitment to investing in advertising is helping to change that for the fitness wearables, but as multi-purpose devices like Apple Watch emerge in the space, it could push single-purpose wearables to the side. Kanter depicted the category as "young" and "volatile," and noted that the Apple Watch's entry will likely tilt the ad spend calculations.