Since 2016, digital advertising spending has been slowing down, with growth decreasing year-on-year for all formats. Whilst social media and online video saw the highest declines in investments, growth in expenditures will remain above 10 percent for both formats until 2020. Conversely, display, paid search and classifieds ad expenses are expected to dive less severely, but spending on these will not grow more than 10 percent in the same year.

The future of digital advertising

Global marketers seem to agree that digital campaigns are very important to their overall promotional efforts. Regardless of which business type they represented, be it direct brand or a traditional business with or without an e-commerce component, the vast majority of global industry professionals considered digital media and formats as being crucial to their work.
With this in mind, projections show that display advertising on social media will lead over online video, with expenditures on social close to double the amount devoted to video in 2020. After display, search is expected to take the second spot, with global ad spend surpassing 114 billion U.S. dollars that year. Classified has been and will remain the smallest format in terms of advertising investments.