The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released another report, this time along with PwC. The report looked at mobile advertising in general, and how much it has grown over the past year. Not surprisingly, Smartphone ads were the fastest growing segment of the market with a growth of 37.4%. This means that smartphone ads now account for 45% of all the digital ad spend, which is quite impressive.
Specifically, video ads on smartphones were where most of this growth came from. These ads went up by 69% in 2017, and they make up 73% of all the video ad spend across mobile, PC, and tablets.
Money in all areas of advertising seems to be directed primarily toward mobile now. Four fifths of social media ad spend is now directed toward mobile, and that number is likely going to continue to climb.
Programmatic advertising is leading the way with this mobile ad growth, with 80% of display ad spend being directed programmatically. That is a growth of 8% compared to 2016. Of course, programmatic ad buying does come with some increased risks related to where the ads will end up, and potential risks for fraud.
The head of advertising industry relations EMEA, Google, Michael Todd, said of this, “Smartphone video outranks any other digital channel with a 69% year on year rise, and with good reason. Advertisers are matching behavior, as consumers increasingly spend their time on mobile.” He went on to say, “As users, we are spending increasing amounts of time on mobile, and video is one of the formats we pay the most attention to. The fact that brands and advertisers are tapping into this reflects the growing understanding of long term brand building alongside short term awareness, and the sales that online video can generate.”
This is just the latest report that shows the dominance of video advertising. Creating high-quality video ads has also become easier over the past year with many software options available to get things done. Marketers need to be quickly shifting their focus when it comes to ads in order to properly take advantage of this trend.
