A new report from eMarketer suggests that 2016 is likely going to be the year that display ad spend in the US finally outpaces search ad spend. Display ads have been slowly gaining on search for a long time but have never passed them. The total display ad spend is estimated to be $32.17 billion in 2016 and the search ad spending will be about $29.24 billion.
Display formats include native ads on millions of sites, social media ads on Internet giants like Facebook and Twitter. This year the total amount spent is expected to be about $13.39 billion on social media ads, which is a jump from $11.57 billion last year.
Video ads (which are a form of display ads) are also growing quite rapidly moving to $9.59 billion this year from $7.46 billion last year. Video is eating up about 14.3% of all US ad spend this year, which is further helping to bump up the display share.
Emarketer wrote when releasing their report that, “Spending growth in the categories of rich media and video will both be significant: 36.4% and 28.5% respectively. Rich media’s growth will be driven by growing adoption of ‘out-stream’ and in-feed video ad formats, while video will grow due to publishers looking to capitalize on high-demand, high-value in-stream video ad inventory.”
Search spend is actually dropping on the desktop moving down to $10.70 billion from $12.91 billion last year. The mobile search continues to grow, moving from $13.62 last year up to $18.54 billion this year.
You can get the full report from eMarketer HERE.
