Media agency Zenith Optimedia released its Advertising Expenditure Forecast yesterday, stating that advertising revenue worldwide would grow 4.4% in 2017, the same as in 2016. The major areas of growth are online video and social media advertising, according to the company.
Zenith's research has found that advertising revenue growth has been fairly stable since 2010, growing at between 4% and 5% each year. The company expects this rate to continue despite political uncertainty in both the US and Europe.
Social media advertising is growing at 20% annually, and is poised to pass newspaper ad revenue. It will bring in $50.2 billion in 2019, compared with $50.7 billion for newspapers, and then will overtake newspapers in 2020. Social media advertising will account for 20% of total global ad revenue in 2019, growing from 16% in 2016.
Internet video is another segment that is growing rapidly, up 18% in 2016. By 2019, it is forecast to climb to $35.4 billion, overtaking the amount spent on radio advertising.
However, even then it would still be less than a fifth of global TV advertising revenue. This is important -- even as younger viewers are shifting eyeballs online, and cord-cutting is picking up, TV viewing continues to command the largest number of eyeballs and for the longest duration. This may change in the future, but there's still a long way to go.
— Aditya Kishore, Practice Leader, Video Transformation, Telco Transformation