#1 M&E Industry Research – Online Advertising set to Soar

Online Advertising ecosystem is maturing and it is happening faster than we believed or projected with more established signs of  online brand advertising  gaining spending share against direct response advertising. Nielson recently released “Online Advertising Performance Outlook 2013” which detail marketers response and how they plan to increase their online spending on brand advertising and have higher engagement through mobile and social mediums.

Key highlights of the report

In 2013, 63 percent of marketers state they will increase their online brand advertising budgets, with 20 percent reporting that those budgets will grow by 20 percent or more.

Nielsen Online Advertising Outlook

Marketers budgets are shifting to follow consumers into the digital realm (Social Media, Mobile, Connected ecosystem…)

• Forty-eight percent of brand marketers will shift dollars from television into online video.
• Nearly 70 percent will increase spend in both social media and mobile advertising
• Seventy percent of brand marketers plan to increase their use of social media in 2013, followed closely by mobile advertising (69 percent) and video advertising (64 percent)

Media Advertising Spends

The lack of relevant ROI metrics continues to challenge marketers; when asked what would  lead them to increase spending on online brand advertising:

• Nearly seven in ten (69 percent) said “improved clarity around the actual return on brand advertising investment.”
• When asked about the most appropriate metrics needed to do so, the top two answers were sales (78 percent) and brand lift (55 percent)

Major expectations of marketers for their agencies and media plan participants are still going
unmet, highlighting clear opportunities for improvement, including:

• Alignment on the single, primary marketing objective and metric that will be used to measure performance against that objective prior to the start of the campaign
• Direct collaboration between the agency and media seller to improve campaign results
• In-market optimization against appropriate brand metrics (e.g. brand lift) to create the best possible results
• Proof points that the intended audience was reached and that the advertising shiftedconsumer opinion

Global advertising budgets are increasing with reported  +3.2 percent increase on Global advertising in 2012, totalling USD 557 billion.  Although traditional channels such as print, radio and television still remains the most favoured channels for consumer communication and Television commanding the Lion’s share at 62.8 %, online medium has started to make its presence felt with brands spending more than $100 billion on online advertising in 2012.