Advertising forecast: social media and video on the rise

Social media advertising will therefore grow from 16% of total internet advertising in 2016 to 20% in 2019. With annual growth rates of 20 percent, social media advertising will be only 1 percent behind newspaper advertising in 2019 (50.2 billion US$ for social media compared to 50.7 billion US$ for newspapers). In 2020, social media will already be the undisputed leader.social media platforms have benefited from the rapid acceptance of mobile technologies and their integration into our everyday lives. For many users, social media is now not only the hub of their social lives, it is also their most important source of information. Social media advertising blends seamlessly with news feeds and is therefore much more effective than the annoying ads that are displayed on mobile devices.Online video overtakes radioWith annual growth rates of 18%, advertising investments in online video are growing almost as fast as those in social media and will total 35.4 billion US$ worldwide in 2019, just above advertising expenditure for radio advertising (35.0 billion US$). Online video advertising is benefiting from the increasing use of mobile devices as well as mobile access to fast data connections and improved handset displays. More and more brands are using online video to complement TV advertising, but very few see online video as a complete replacement for TV advertising. Even in 2019, online video advertising will account for less than a fifth (18%) of television advertising.Growth driver for Switzerland too"Unfortunately, we don't have exact figures for the Swiss market, but we can see from the development of our daily business that online video and social media are growing very strongly," says Beat Krebs, CEO of ZenithOptimedia Switzerland, assessing the situation here. "We are increasingly using online video to complement TV with young and mobile target groups, and our social media capacities have been growing continuously for years, so we are also expecting a strong increase in investment in these areas in Switzerland," explains Krebs.Further continuous growth in advertising expenditure in 2017 despite political risks and four-year comparisonFor 2017, the forecast predicts a global increase in advertising expenditure of 4.4%, the same level of growth as in 2016. This is a very strong performance, as the unexpected outcome of the Brexit vote in the UK and the presidential election in the US have increased political uncertainty and the risk of trade restrictions. The year 2017 also stands in difficult comparison with 2016, which benefited considerably in terms of advertising expenditure from the major events that take place every four years (elections in the USA, the Summer Olympics and the European Football Championships), and the forecast predicts that global advertising investments will continue to rise steadily after 2017, with growth of 4.4% for 2018 and 4.1% for 2019. Global advertising investment has grown at a remarkably stable rate of between four and five percent annually since 2010, either on a par with or just below global GDP growth. Before the financial crisis, the advertising market over-reflected the economic situation, i.e. advertising spending grew faster in economic boom times and shrank faster in times of recession, resulting in very different annual growth rates. Recently, however, the global advertising market appears to have entered a more stable growth phase. "We also expect growth in Switzerland in the coming years. We estimate growth of 2.0% for 2017, 2.2% for 2018 and 2.2% for 2019," says Beat Krebs, describing expectations for the coming years.