No sign of an advertising slowdown as Brexit approaches

The Global Ad Spend forecast for 2019 is out and the outlook is optimistic.

Despite political uncertainty and evidence of consumer confidence dropping, advertising spend is forecast to grow by 6.1% in 2019, a figure which has been upgraded since the last report was produced six months ago. This growth is largely attributed to the unrelenting growth in the digital economy. Despite many tech stocks taking a hit in the recent past, the digital economy remains resilient and in growth. This is reflected in the predictions for the growth of digital advertising as a share of all advertising, rising from 38.5% in 2018 to 41.4% in 2019 and then 43.8% in 2020. It is worth noting that ‘digital’ includes paid search as well as display, video and mobile.

The largest growth channel will be online video, expected to rise by 20% in 2019. In the UK, online video is expected to represent more than half of all digital spend by 2020. Online video is fast becoming the language of the internet – for example Instagram Stories has over 400 million daily active users. The opportunities to personalise video messaging are also rapidly evolving which will contribute to this steep growth curve in advertising spend.

Digital is also driving the growth in out of home advertising, with the launch of programmatic and connected screens contributing to expected growth rates of 4% in 2019. And despite a shrinking share of overall ad spend, TV is expected to grow by 1.6% by 2020, largely supported by innovations within the programmatic delivery of TV advertising.

Which begs the question, is ‘digital’ still a relevant classification for advertising?