Executive Summary

The US computing products and consumer electronics industry will be the fastest-growing digital ad spender in 2020, up 18.0% from last year. Telecom will be the third-fastest-growing, up 12.0% from 2019. Total US digital ad spend will grow by 1.7% in 2020.

How much will the two tech categories spend on digital ads?

The telecom industry will account for $13.99 billion of total digital ad spend in 2020, and the computing products and consumer electronics industry for $11.64 billion. Collectively, the two industries will make up 19% of the market.

How much of that spending will go toward mobile?

Mobile will capture 76.5% of digital ad spend for telecom and 75.7% for computing products and consumer electronics—more than the industry average of 68.0%. That ranks the two industries among the three most mobile-centric digital advertisers.

Which digital ad format will see the most spending?

Both verticals will allocate more digital ad dollars to display than to search. Telecom advertisers will spend $8.89 billion, or 63.6%, of their 2020 digital ad budgets on display, about 8 percentage points higher than the industry average. Computing products and consumer electronics companies will spend $7.25 billion, or 62.3%, of their digital ad budgets on display this year.

How has the coronavirus changed the outlook?

We estimate that, despite the pandemic, both industries will continue to increase their digital ad spending at an unrelenting pace. The growth of telecom’s digital ad spend this year will be just 3.8 percentage points lower than our pre-pandemic estimate. For computing products and consumer electronics, digital ad spend growth will be only 0.4 percentage points less than previously forecast.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report provides our annual breakdown of digital ad spending for telecom and for computing products and consumer electronics. While most other reports in this series focus on a single industry, we examine two verticals here because of their similarities.

KEY STAT: The telecom and computing products and consumer electronics industries will see digital ad spending growth rates at 12.0% and 18.0%, respectively, well above the overall industry average in 2020.