Mobile internet advertising will overtake newspaper advertising next year, accounting for 12.4% of global adspend while newspapers account for 11.9%, according to ZenithOptimedia’s new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts.
Mobile internet will be the third-largest advertising medium, behind television and desktop internet, growing 38% in 2016 to $71bn, while newspaper advertising will shrink 4% to $68bn. However, the report does not recognise that many newsbrands now operate on mobile and desktop rather than just in print.
Mobile advertising remains the driving force behind the growth of the entire advertising market, contributing 83% of all new ad dollars between 2014 and 2017.
Internet advertising to overtake television in 2018 as print continues to shrink
Desktop internet advertising will continue to grow, but will lose market share for the first time this year, dropping from 19.8% of global adspend in 2014 to 19.4%. By 2017 ZenithOptimedia forecasts desktop internet to account for 19.1% of global adspend.
Meanwhile mobile internet advertising’s share of the global ad market will rise from 5.7% in 2014 to 15% in 2017.
[advert position=”left”]
Overall, internet advertising will account for 34% of global adspend in 2017, slightly behind television’s 35.9%.
According to the forecast, the market share gap between the two media will narrow from 13.3 percentage points in 2014 to 1.9 in 2017. At this rate of growth, internet advertising will overtake television in 2018.
Print adspend continues to decline across most of the world, as it has done since 2008. ZenithOptimedia predicts newspaper adspend will shrink by an average of 4.9% a year through to 2017, while magazine advertising will shrink by 3.2% a year.
Their combined share of global adspend has fallen from 39.4% in 2007 to 19.6% this year, and is expected to fall to 16.7% by 2017.
However, commenting on the forecast, Denise Turner, insight director at Newsworks, said: “This report only refers to newspapers in their print format, without taking into account the fact that they are now multi-platform newsbrands which exist across mobiles, tablets and online as well.
“Some of the advertising spend that is being attributed to mobile in this report will have been around newsbrand content. It seems strange to pit mobile against newspapers, when newspapers are part of mobile.
“I think it’s time that our leading forecasters stop talking about one medium displacing another and recognise the fact that newsbrand content is accessed by people throughout the day across a range of platforms and devices. As Martin Sorrell said on Friday, ‘the days of separation are gone’.”
Overall, ZenithOptimedia forecasts that global adspend will grow 4% to reach $554bn in 2015, and will accelerate to 5% growth in 2016, boosted by the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and the US Presidential elections.
Adspend will then slow down slightly in the absence of these events, growing 4.4% in 2017.
“Mobile technology is rapidly transforming the way consumers across the world live their lives, and is disrupting business models across all industries,” said Steve King, ZenithOptimedia’s CEO, Worldwide.
“We are now witnessing the fastest transition of ad budgets in history as marketers and agencies scramble to catch up with consumers’ embrace of the mobile way of life.”
