The advertising landscape is constantly adapting to accommodate the habits of online users.

In recent years we have seen dramatic shifts that have pulled advertising from desktops to phones. Additionally, we have seen huge increases in native advertising, social media advertising and video advertising.

With all these changes in the advertising world, it can be hard to keep up. Luckily, we’ve outlined current trends to help identify the best ways to build a winning advertising strategy for your business.

Advertising statistics in 2019

To better visualize the impact that different advertising strategies can have for your company, we have compiled 30 advertising statistics for you to analyze.

Native advertising statistics

Because internet users desire a more authentic and personal advertising experience, they’ve largely avoided paid advertising like the plague. The way to deliver the authenticity users crave is through native advertising.

Native advertising is a method of displaying ads so they fit naturally with the reader or viewer experience. These ads generally recommend products based on past internet browsing data. Users enjoy this since the ads are curated just for them. And not only do users benefit from native advertising, companies do as well. Effectively leveraging native advertising to broadcast a more authentic message can help your company improve its brand visibility and reach customers. This translates to higher click-through rates and a more enjoyable user experience. Utilizing native advertising software and understanding the impact that native advertising can have for your brand will help lead to a better advertising strategy:

• Native advertising was the fastest-growing advertising segment, with 35 percent growth between 2017 and 2018. (eMarketer) 
• 70 percent of users would rather learn about products through content than traditional advertisements. (Content Marketing Institute)
• Native ads receive 53 percent more views than traditional display ads. (Sharethrough)
• Native advertising increases purchase intent by 18 percent. (Forbes)
• Native ad spending is projected to increase to $41.1 billion in 2019. This means native advertising will account for 61 percent of total digital display ad spending in the U.S. (eMarketer)
• Native video advertising accounts for 56 percent of video ad spending. (IAB 2018 Video Ad Spend Study)

Facebook advertising statistics

The value of Facebook advertising should be a no-brainer given the fact there are over 2.32 billion monthly active Facebook users. This figure was 8 percent higher than the prior year and is expected to continue to grow. More significantly, there are 1.74 billion mobile active users, which shows mobile advertising should be a priority for any business.

• 93 percent of marketers use Facebook advertising regularly. (Sprout Social)
• The average Facebook user clicks on eight advertisements per month. (Hootsuite)
• Facebook’s mobile ad revenue increased 50 percent in 2018. (Hootsuite)
• The average price per ad increased 17 percent in the second quarter of 2018. (Hootsuite)
• Instagram will gain an estimated 70 percent of Facebook's ad revenue by 2020. (Recode)

YouTube advertising statistics

In 2018, YouTube overtook Facebook as the second most visited website in the world. The video-sharing site gets more than 30 million visitors per day, and almost 5 billion videos are watched daily. More videos mean more ads, and more ads mean more revenue for your business.

Google's TrueView (YouTube’s advertising service) is built on the premise you'll only pay for your advertisement when someone chooses to watch your ad. TrueView also gives the viewers a choice on what kind of advertisements they want to watch, which helps drive relevant content to the consumer. YouTube is quickly becoming the Holy Grail of advertising, and understanding its impact can help you make the right advertising decisions for your business.

• Nearly 79 percent of marketers think YouTube is the most effective platform for video marketing. (Hootsuite)
• Mobile advertisements on YouTube receive viewer attention 83 percent of the time. (Ipsos)
• Paid YouTube mobile advertising is 84 percent more likely to receive attention than advertising on television. (Think with Google)
• YouTube generated $3.36 billion in net U.S. video ad revenue in 2018. This represents a 17 percent increase from 2017. (eMarketer)
• Viewers who watch TrueView ads — i.e., watch at least 30 seconds of one — were 23 times more likely to visit or subscribe to the brand’s channel, watch more ads by that brand or share the brand’s video. (Think with Google)

Mobile advertising statistics

There are over 7.7 billion mobile devices in use (smartphones and tablets) in the world, compared to only 2 billion PCs. Considering the high number of users, mobile advertising just makes sense. Along with its unequaled number of users, mobile advertising has a lot of other beneficial features, such as GIS tracking (so ads can target users based on location), touch points to reach the user in a variety of ways (text, alerts, phone calls) and a smaller screen to capture the viewer's attention. Aside from these informative statistics, mobile advertising software can help your company get started on an effective mobile advertising strategy. 

• Mobile ad campaigns are five times more effective than online advertisements. (Mobile Marketer)
• 71 percent of marketers believe mobile marketing is core to their business. (Salesforce)
• Appearing in mobile search ad results can increase brand awareness by 46 percent. (Think with Google)
• There were a total of 197 billion mobile app downloads in 2017. (Connext Digital)
• Mobile devices account for 53 percent of paid search clicks. (Aumcore)

Television advertising statistics

Although many advertisers are increasing their ad spend on social media and digital platforms, television still remains in the fight as a platform for advertisers to promote their brands. Although people aged 18–34 only watch an average of 2 hrs and 17 minutes of television per day, people above the age of 35, average a total of 5 hours and 54 minutes of television watching per day. There are still plenty of live events that people shell out cable subscriptions for such as sports, award shows, and political news coverage. While television will definitely lose some of its ad spend over the next 5 years, it seems to still be an advantageous platform to advertise in the short term. 

• Spending on TV ads slipped 0.5 percent in 2018 to $69.8 billion. (Forbes, 2018)
• TV’s share of total U.S. media spend dropped from 33.9 percent to 31.6 percent between 2017 and 2018.  (Forbes, 2018)
• TV ad spend in the U.S. is expected to see an uptick in 2020, but fall below 25 percent of total ad spend by 2020.  (Forbes, 2018)

Global ad spend statistics

• Global ad spend reached an estimated $579 billion at the end of 2018. (Recode, 2018)
• Asia-Pacific and North America accounted for 70.5 percent of global ad spend in 2018. (eMarketer, 2018)
• North America was the top advertising market in 2018, with $232.8 billion spent and 37 percent of worldwide total media. (eMarketer, 2018)
• Asia-Pacific is predicted to be the top advertising market by 2022. (eMarketer, 2018)
• Samsung, based in South Korea, is the world’s largest advertiser, spending $11.2 billion on advertising and sales promotion in 2017. (Ad Age, 2018)
• 68 of the 100 largest advertisers spent more on advertising in 2017. (Ad Age, 2018)
• 105 global companies had an ad spend greater than $1 billion in 2017. (Ad Age, 2018)

Final advertising projections

• eMarketer projects that by 2019, 83.6 percent of U.S. digital display ad dollars will transact programmatically. (eMarketer)
• Zenith predicts that social media advertising will be worth $50.2 billion in 2019 and will surpass the overall ad revenue of newspaper advertising by 2020. (Zenith)
• Digital advertising spend across mobile, wearable and online devices will exceed $285 billion by 2020. This represents a 78 percent increase from the $160 billion in advertising spend on 2016. (The Fast Mode)
• Mobile advertising is projected to grow by an annual average of 13 percent from 2017 through 2022. (Marketing Charts)
  
  

What this means for advertisers 

To stay competitive in the advertising world, businesses have to keep up to date on users’ changing browsing habits. This includes using the numbers above as a guideline to stay ahead of the game in 2019. We've put together a takeaway summary of these statistics for you.

After looking at the variety of ways you can advertise and market your product, it is clear that diversifying your advertising campaigns is the key to success. Combining a healthy mix of video advertising, social media advertising and native advertising will allow your company to stay visible on a variety of platforms.

To further supplement your knowledge, make sure to utilize social media advertising software, search advertising software and video advertising software to help your business establish an effective advertising strategy.   

Ready to learn more? Check out our article on driving sales with content marketing.