The trade association for digital advertising in the UK, IAB UK, announced recently the results of a Digital Adspend study done in conjunction with PwC, which revealed that UK advertisers spent upwards of 13.4 billion pounds on digital advertising in 2018.
According to their findings, IAB UK has said that this 13.4 billion spend figure represents a 15% year-on-year increase, and is reflective of the power of digital advertising in this era of smartphones, multi-screens, and cross-platform usage.
And perhaps the most interesting finding of the report is that, for the first time ever, digital ad spend for smartphones exceeded desktop! 51% of the total spend was dedicated to smartphones in 2018, versus the 45% of total spend in 2017.
This 6% increase represents an increase of circa 1.65 billion pounds.
Chief Digital Officer for IAB UK, Tim Elkington, said: “Seeing mobile now account for more than half of all digital spend is a significant milestone” and that in a decade of reporting on these numbers, IAB has “seen spend rise from 38 million in 2009 to 6.88 billion in 2018.”
And CEO of IAB UK, Jon Mew, continued, stating: “digital advertising remains an accessible route to market for SMEs. We continue to see evidence of online advertising being used for brand-building […]”
This is clearly a trend that has been on the rise for several years, with the proliferation and wide accessibility of smartphones. And it ultimately reflects today’s consumer behavior – the most recent Digital Marketing Overview from UKOM, an audience data measurement insight firm, revealed that 65% of the time individuals spend ‘online’ is on mobile.
And this increase in mobile ad spend has happened in tandem with an increase in video and display-ad spend – clearly, consumers are spending the majority of their time online on their smartphones, and brands have listened and taken notice, delivering increased mobile ads, and more specifically, increased mobile video ads.
What do you think these figures will look like for 2019? How much of a gap will there be between mobile and desktop ad spend? Will ‘virtual’ or ‘augmented’ ad spend be more top-of-mind? Will video and display still remain supreme? Let me know what you think!
