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‘Mobile adspend in Ireland grows from €9.9m in 2012 to €231m in 2016’ & ‘total digital adspend grows from €148.2m to €445m in the same four year period’.
The development of technology has provided consumers with a device that only Mork and Mindy could only have dreamt of, the mobile phone, aka – the new best friend. This tech change in society has a major influence on how all advertisers are targeting their customers, annual adspend figures showing the shift of marketing budget from traditional media to digital, with focus on mobile. This is where customers can be found and communicated to in an engaging and relevant manner with little or no wastage.
The IAB Ireland, the trade association for digital advertising in conjunction with PwC, conducted the latest research to provide us with the most accurate information when measuring digital ad-spend in Ireland. The produced report includes spend from media agency buyers, brands direct, digital sales houses, and various publishers – local and international in Ireland for the entire year of 2016.
The findings may surprise some, the exponential growth of mobile consumption, with social media and video on demand evident drivers, and advertising spend following digital consumption with significant year on year growth figures.
The IAB Ireland PwC Online Adspend Study for 2016 (Jan to Dec) reports ad revenues of €445m compared to €340m in 2015, a significant growth of 31%.
Core Media estimates that in 2016 Google, across all its platforms, will generate around €175m on the island of Ireland alone. “Some 16pc of all advertising money spent on media in Ireland is spent on Google,” notes Alan Cox, CEO of Core Media.
Key findings:
Advertisers follow consumption, so what is driving digital growth in 2016?
Top 5 spenders on desktop & mobile devices by advertising category & contribution to total digital spend:
Source: IAB Ireland, Independent.ie
Once upon a time, the internet was an ocean of text. Companies’ websites consisted of text content and, if you were lucky, the occasional stock image.
Whether you’ve adapted or not, we are now in the video age. And it’s fair to say that competition for consumers’ attention has never been fiercer.
This is an opportunity, though, not a crisis. Video communicates ideas with greater efficiency and – if done right – panache than text. The right video content – creative, distinctive, audience-appropriate – produces higher engagement rates, profile, SEO results and dwell time than text.
Video is steadily overtaking text on mobile devices; and as a consequence, it is becoming the most ubiquitous and valuable communication tool for your company.
Is video becoming the most powerful online marketing channel?
Statistics say so…
According to the latest report from Cisco Visual Networking Index which was published on 27th May 2015:
“Globally, consumer internet video traffic will be 80% of all consumer Internet traffic in 2019, up from 64% in 2014. This percentage does not include video exchanged through peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand [VoD], internet, and P2P) will be in the range of 80 to 90% of global consumer traffic by 2019.
Internet video to TV doubled in 2014. Internet video to TV will continue to grow at a rapid pace, increasing fourfold by 2019. Internet video to TV traffic will be 17% of consumer internet video traffic by 2019, up from 16% in 2014.
Consumer VoD traffic will double by 2019. HD will be 70% of IP VOD traffic in 2019, up from 59% in 2014.
Content delivery network traffic will deliver over half of all internet video traffic by 2019. By 2019, 72% of all Internet video traffic will cross content delivery networks, up from 57% in 2014”.
How do I target these potential customers online while they watch video content?
When it comes to video advertising there are certain challenges that ad agencies, advertisers directly and media companies face.
The scarcity of premium or quality content seems to be the key indicator for advertising agencies not allocating a greater budget to video marketing. Ad agencies find it challenging to purchase media across video due to the lack of supply of quality content.
Publishers that provide rich media and long tail video content benefit from this and can charge accordingly.
Ad agencies and advertisers are resorting to use “outstream” video formats that overcome the obstacle of poor quality content. Outstream ad formats allow advertisers deliver video advertising without requiring premium video content to appear against. This video ad type generally appears within the body of the published content, as a user scrolls down the page.
A study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Teads, May 2015 surveyed over 500 ad agencies and advertisers with over 100 publishers. The results provided some interesting insights.
| Advertising agency
“What increase will your clients’ spend on digital video advertising change in the next two years?”
Significantly increase 31% Moderately increase 39% Stay the same 12% Moderately decrease 8% Significantly decrease 0%
Premium inventory isn’t enough, advertisers and agencies want better targeting and measurement of their video ads’ impact.
|
Advertiser
“Will your spend on digital video advertising will change in the next two years?”
Significantly increase 25% Moderately increase 52% Stay the same 15% Moderately decrease 7% Significantly decrease 1%
|
| ‘70% of agencies and 77% of advertisers expect video budgets to increase in the next few years’ | ‘Media companies are driven by the unique enticing features’ |
| Media companies
“What is the main benefit of video advertising for your brand?” Premium means higher CPMs 44% To provide more engaging advertising content to our customers 29% Allocation for budget from traditional media budgets 19% Reaching online audience that tv cannot reach 7%
|
Media brands face barriers:
➔ Costs of producing quality long form content puts pressure on the return on investment. ➔ Having video for specific content is resource and cost draining ➔ The lack of quality inventory in the market place
|
How can advertisers increase ad engagement levels? Is it choosing the right content or is it about having compelling creative?
It is certainly a combination of both. The advertising creative needs to be strong enough to capture the user’s attention, in their time.
With an industry that has become saturated with advertising and cluttered with competition, it is imperative that the creative is of quality content, served to the user at the right time within the relevant environment.
Advertisers must not forget that media consumption favours the customer; people have full control over what content they watch, when they watch it, and where. Technology facilitates that in every way.
We are at an era of multi-device watching, engaging on Twitter while watching TV is a perfect example. So the main challenge is getting the attention of a potential customer and retaining their attention long enough for them to get your message.
Video is an effective way of achieving high engagement levels with measurable performance measures; it is the most powerful advertising medium. Video needs to work hand in hand with technology and targeting to effectively deliver. The consumption levels of video have increased dramatically over the last few years, and the marketing industry is changing to reflect. The full potential of video has yet to be realised.
The only constant, they say, is change. And that’s especially true when it comes to ad spend, online content and consumer habits.
So how is the digital landscape looking for the future? We have trawled the web in search of the latest findings on digital consumption, the growth of video, the influence of social media and the impact of advancing technology.
Let’s start with the Irish market…
IRISH DIGITAL MARKET
Ad spend is one of the most affected areas in the past year or so, with seismic shifts in digital ad spend, mobile ads, native advertising and especially video advertising.
Key Findings:
This move towards video ad spend is a reaction to consumer habits. As you’ll see below, Irish consumers are flocking to online video, which is having a knock-on effect on traditional TV and social networking.
Arguably the biggest change in the last two years in Ireland has been the rise of Video on Demand (of VoD). For instance…
This, of course, has a knock-on effect on marketing trends. Here is where you can see the real power of viral campaigns and word of mouth.
Consumers tend to be most receptive on mobile devices, particularly smartphones:
These figures are mostly consistent with UK trends. Let’s take a look…
UK DIGITAL MARKET
Key Findings:
So how does that apply to ads? You’d be surprised how much consumers embrace ads, if they’re done the right way…
Here’s how the UK were spending their ad budgets…
And finally, here’s a tantalising statistic about the broader international market:
Source: Google, IAB Ireland & UK, Entrepreneur, Nov 2015
