Digital Display Advertising Trends and Statistics

But what does the world of online display advertising look like in 2016? Here are six of the top trends for the year to help you identify where online display advertising has been, where it is now, and where it is going in the future.

1. Display advertising is surpassing search.

In years before, more money was spent on search advertisements than on display advertisements. As the search advertising pool becomes more and more competitive, companies are moving back to display advertising to get their names out to potential customers. After money spent on both display and search advertising were about equal in 2015, 2016 will see about $3 billion more spent on display advertisements than search advertisements.

2. Digital advertising is shifting to mobile

While display advertisements are continuing to grow, they’re also moving their focus to appearing on mobile phones and sites. In 2016, about 63% of all marketing spending will be on mobile efforts.

3. Digital Display Advertising is Majorly Programmatic

In our trends and data post entitled “PPC Statistics“, we found that about 66% of all money spent on digital display advertising is programmatic. That number comes out to just above http://www.emarketer.com/Article/More-Than-Two-Thirds-of-US-Digital-Display-Ad-Spending-Programmatic/1013789, which is a major jump from where it was just last year. The amount of money spent on programmatic digital display advertising was down from this number about 40% in 2015.

4. People still don’t like ads

Even as more and more money is spent on advertisements in 2016, consumers will continue to look for ways to block them from their view. For online display advertising in 2016, this means marketers will need to continue to find creative ways to get around the ad blockers consumers put in place without being too obvious and making their potential new customers angry. While this is nothing new for marketers, the struggle to appeal to a group of people who dislikes being sold to is an ever existing problem in the marketing industry.

5. Banner ads will become less and less popular.

Banner ads have been around for a while, so they’re easy for consumers to ignore at this point. As we already addressed, 2016 will continue to be a year that marketers look for new ways to sell to their consumers without their consumers realizing they are being sold to. This means without banner ads. New forms of online display advertising will appear and take precedence over the banner ad. Possible forms of advertising that may be making its way in to take over include things like video or other media rich advertisements.

6. Focus will be on ROI, not awareness

For many years, advertising was all about getting a company’s name out. While they wanted sales to be made, they found it was more important to show that they exist and then eventually sales would follow. While this may still be the strategy for small businesses needing to make a connection with customers in the area, more companies in 2016 will focus on the ROI of their ads. As the analytics we are able to measure continues to increase, we can develop a better picture of the return on investment that our online display advertisements are bringing us. Programs like Google Analytics allow us to look deeply into the behaviors of our customers and make modifications to get the results we are looking for.

Online display advertising is a means of making connections, gaining attention, and pushing products that isn’t going to go away anytime soon. In 2016, we see the online display advertising industry continuing to grow and reach out to new avenues in order to make new impressions. With these six trends in mind, you can create a display advertising strategy to bring your company success.