Half of ad gains from mobile

The latest quarterly forecast of the U.S. advertising economy from ZenithOptimedia Group predicts that spending on advertising in the U.S. will show a 3.4% growth for 2013.  That's a slight downturn in the previous prediction of 3.5% growth.  The future looks a bit better - predictions of 4.5-4.5% growth in 2014-2015.  However, this remains significantly lower (20%) than what is predicted for global ad growth over the same period.  And on a global perspective, growth in advertising expenditures will continue to trail growth in GDP.

The problem for traditional media is that almost all of the growth is driven by digital advertising formats.  ZenithOptimedia forecasts that digital advertising will account for 21.8% of all US ad expenditures this year, and continue to grow to 28% of ad revenues in 2015.  And the fastest growing segment in digital is mobile.  (The figure shows global ad spending)

“Mobile advertising is still relatively small,” the Publicis media shop notes in its report, adding: “we expect it to total $6.2 billion this year, or 3.7% of total ad expenditure – but it is growing extremely rapidly.”

Another way of putting things is that the 2013 growth in mobile advertising accounts for about half of the total gains in US ad spending, and more than a third of global ad gains.  Total digital ad growth will account for two-thirds of total global growth in

In contrast, the study predicts that TV global ad share will peak in 2013 at about 40%, while newspaper's share will continue to fall, reaching 15% by 2015.  The shares for magazines, radio, and outdoor will also continue to decline.

Sources -  Upward Mobility: Hand-Held Web Accounts For Half of U.S. Ad Expansion, MediaPost Agency Daily
Executive summary: Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, September 2013,  ZenithOptima press release