A report by Polar, a format management platform, unveils some interesting insights on where digital advertising expenditure is heading, which platforms are soon going to rise in popularity, and why the cookie is dying.

Where is digital advertising spend going?

• Digital ad spend increases by 18% year on year and soon will account for 50% of the total ad spend.
• Facebook and Google will account for 51% of the $333 billion digital market.
• Mobile will account for 65% of the digital avenue.

 

Where is the new hub of innovation?

• Social media platforms are investing heavily in developing innovative ad formats and creative through tools and other resources.
• Meanwhile, institutions such as the IAB ( International Advertising Bureau) has focused more on programmatic and ignored creative.

Where is the attention at?

• Tiktok, Reddit and Pinterest are slowly growing popularity and gaining attention from both consumers and brands.

 

• Reddit is growing faster than any other social platform right now and has around 330 million monthly active users.
• Pinterest is currently surfing the growth wave of online commerce and serves as a product catalogue to brands and retailers.

Where is the future of content?

• Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat Stories have dominated the content space.
• They have large viewership. One in three of the most-watched stories on Instagram is from business.
• They have organic reach and encourage more engagement among the audience.

When is the next disruption coming?

What is happening to search?

• Search advertising is 45% of all digital and continuing to grow above market.
• Amazon comes in at a second place in search advertising, and retailers are willing to spend big bucks to get as close as they can to the purchase decision.
• Facebook is entering the search advertising industry and search ad placements is now included by default to all advertisers.

What’s Google’s future in advertising?

• Google’s ad tech business is less than 6% of the total revenue. 87% comes from O&O (search, Youtube, Mail, Maps).
• In the long term, it is likely that the ad tech business might be shut down.
• Google is now investing heavily in cloud computing and has acquired almost $2.6 billion-worth of data analytics startups.

What’s on sale?

Mergers and acquisitions rise as mid-level companies acquire up-and-coming content media brands to have a shot at competing with the likes of Facebook and Google.

 

What’s in store for us?

• User privacy will dominate the industry in 2020. Brands such as Apple and Google have already upgraded security on browsers with technologies such as ITP (intelligent tracking prevention) and Chrome Privacy. These moves have limited the use of third-party cookies and made users-tracking more difficult.
• In turn, these security measures have led to a dramatic drop in publisher revenues.
• Moreover, this cookieless web means that Google and Facebook have deterministic data (i.e logged in users at scale) while everyone else struggles.