Digital ad spending in Italy 2016-2025

Digital ad spending in Italy added up to 3.64 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, marking a slight reduction from the previous year - despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Spending was expected to increase again over the next five years, before reaching a projected 5.53 billion in 2025.

Digital formats

Among the available formats, video ads appeared the most profitable, with a spend of 1.47 billion U.S. dollars being projected for 2021 alone. Moreover, a glance at the mobile sector shows how the mobile advertising market increased dramatically between 2006 and 2019, and is also expected to grow over the next five years before reaching an expected 3 billion spend in 2025.

Mobile video ads

Unsurprisingly, the most profitable advertising format was also the one grabbing the most attention. A survey conducted in 2019 among Italian mobile surfers revealed that video ads played before or during another video attracted users’ attention, against 16 percent of audio adverts.

Mobile advertising

Just in 2015, with 267 million euros market value, display advertising was the most relevant sector of the mobile advertising market, dwarfing video advertising, whose value was less than 60 million euros. Over the following years, the video ad market caught up, outdoing all other formats. As a matter of fact, in 2019, the video ad market reached a value of 665 million euros.