Where the Big Ad Bucks are Flowing

Where the Big Ad Bucks are Flowing

There’s no stopping those advertising dollars once they start flowing. And flow they must. As 2014 draws to a close, the mighty greenback is flowing in more different directions than ever. Credit the ever-increasing number of marketing channels for spreading the money so far and wide. Here are three of the channels getting major action thanks to current spend trends.

Digital Theater. The U.S. pumped serious bucks into online video in 2013 – enough to send video budgets soaring by 44.5% in that year. Total spend was a skyscraping $4.18 billion. Those figures are expected to leap even higher when the final tallies are in for 2014. Where they’ll stop, nobody knows. Forecasts from digital research authority eMarketer are pointing at numbers in the vicinity of $12.27 billion in 2018.

Among the reasons for the projected climb is the blazing speed of networks streaming videos to mobile devices. Long, short, or medium, vids now make for amazingly smooth viewing. Obviously a more satisfying attention-grabber than ho-hum banners, videos definitely will be nabbing more and more ad bucks as time marches on.

Mobile Money Magnet. Tracking firm StatCounter reports that 30% of all web traffic originates with smartphones and tablets. Capitalizing on the traffic flow, U.S. marketers more than doubled their spend on mobile advertising from 2012 to 2013. Forecasters at eMarketer see a spending increase of at least 50% in 2014.

Beware the Bots. In the greatest human impersonation since Invasion of the Body Snatchers, bots are siphoning off substantial ad bucks. Capable of posing as human traffic, the programmed scavengers will have gobbled up $11.6 billion in advertising spend in 2014. And every last cent will be money down the drain. Among the digital entities determined to rid cyberspace of the insidious bots is Google. The search engine behemoth purchased anti-fraud site Spider.io in hopes of counteracting the cyber menace.

If you have any questions or comments about trends in ad spending, or about any other brand-related topic, feel free to send them our way.

You can connect with the Young Company team at 949-376-8404 #4033 or bart@youngcompany.com. And be sure to follow us for the latest brand marketing news and tips.