Forget the US: emerging markets are the future of online adspend

There is a great deal of focus placed on the American market when we look at ad spend numbers and marketing budget distribution; but the US market is not the only one where significant amounts of cash are being spent. Online adspend is increasingly beng driven by emerging market countries, suggesting that they represent the future of one of the web’s biggest money spinning sectors.

A new survey from online research company eMarketer looks at the ad spend figures from 2010 to the projected figures of 2016 throughout the world. It suggest that by 2016, online ad spend could be worth US$179.41-billion. The two tables that follow show the total ad spend on the left and the digital ad spend on the right:

Ok, so the US was giving us 32% of our total ad spend in 2010; but in 2016 this is expected to drop to 28%. This might not sound like a huge drop (four percent); but when you look at the real numbers, that means that there are other sectors that are increasing their spend and contributing to the total pot.

Similarly when we look at digital specific ad spend, the US in 2010 gave us 35% and in 2016 they are expected to still contribute the same percentage of spend. The growth in their ad spend numbers is beginning to slow — not plateau – but slow. Other countries such as China are seeing a 220% growth in the same period in total ad spend and 445% in digital ad spend.

When looking at the total spend on digital compared to the whole; there is a vast difference.

In 2010, digital accounted for a total of 15% of the total, while in 2016, digital is expected to rise to 26% of the total.

Clearly as the digital age matures and more and more emerging markets are beginning to become digitally savvy; they are pushing more and more of their ad spend towards digital, where there are new and engaging ways of reaching their audience who are baying for new and different things on a daily basis.

So what does this tell us?

Well, we need to care about these numbers because we all need to look at the trends that we are seeing on other emerging markets as well as more mature markets as they will enable us to better gear ourselves for the future.

Should we continue to push large sums of money into mediums that are not seeing returns, then there is less and less chance that companies will enjoy a solid return on investment. We as business owners and marketers alike, need to become better equipped at reading and analysing market trends and statistics. This is the age of big data and the smarter we are at reading and analysing, it the better equipped we are at making decisions.

This does not mean that we need to revert to a state of analysis paralysis; but rather that decisions around organizational and product positioning need to be looked at with the knowledge of the past as well as information that can be gathered from similar markets. There is no need any more to reinvent the wheel; it’s there and it works rather well.

In this knowledge economy that we find ourselves in; it is not good enough to simply have data or information; the key is putting it to work.