Monday, April 3, 2017

Digital Tops TV Despite Some Specific Struggles

Ad Age reports that US digital advertising sales surpassed television ad sales for the first time in 2016. Digital sales pulled in $70 billion compared to $67 billion on the more traditional television medium.

Magna, a strategic media forecasting company, reports that television saw a 4.7% increase in 2016 due to the Olympics and the presidential election. However, that growth is expected to settle back into the 3.7% range for 2017. Meanwhile, digital sales are projected to increase 14% in 2017. Magna believes that by the end of 2017 digital advertising sales will pass television in not only the United States, but globally.

With this, digital vendors are under the microscope more than ever before. Big brands like JP Morgan Chase are pulling the plug on their programmatic to avoid their ads being placed on unwanted sites.

Other large companies have had it with video hub, YouTube, as they are unhappy with the videos their ads are paired with. While advertisers understand that ads are placed with algorithms, formulas, and data, users are not quite as informed. Many users believe that the ad aligned with the video they are viewing is purposefully done.

YouTube isn’t taking a front row seat to their slow destruction though. The Google owned company is taking steps to allow advertisers to proactively avoid undesired content. Previously, YouTube had two preventative options to avoid, “sensitive social issues” and “tragedy and conflicts”. Now, YouTube has rolled out options to stay away from content that is, “sexually suggestive”, “sensational and shocking” and “profanity and rough language”.

While this may help advertisers, YouTube seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place as they’re receiving push back from content creators. YouTube states in a blog post that, “There’s a difference between the free expression that lives on YouTube and the content that brands have told us they want to advertise against”. With this setback, YouTube could potentially lose $750 million this year.


Even with upset brands and algorithm tweaks, digital advertising has a bright future as king of the castle. 

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