Digital ad spending by device Mobile advertising is by far the preferred destination for digital ad spending in the US, just as it is everywhere else. However, mobile’s ever-accelerating domination of the digital ad market appears to finally be leveling off.

Google, Meta to get boost from Western Europe digital ad spending: Total category expenditures to exceed $90 billion this year, fueled by appeal of search and display formats.

Video and mobile advertising held strong in 2020 and will post respective gains of 15.2% and 15.3% this year. Ad units in social media are driving these gains as consumer usage is up and programmatic buying of inventory adds flexibility for budget-conscious media buyers. How are traditional formats faring? Not well.

Total ad spending in France and Germany took a big hit in 2020, as a result of the pandemic. But digital advertising bucked that trend and will lead a strong double-digit recovery in ad outlays during 2021.

Digital advertising confounded the conditions of the past year or so and will attract more than three-quarters of total media ad spending in 2021—£19.23 billion ($24.66 billion). Video has been the biggest driver of digital spend during this time.

Last year, China was the only market to see overall ad spending growth, although digital ad spending performed well almost everywhere. This year, every country will see growth in almost every category.

These apps will attract the lion’s share of mobile advertising, but brands should still explore opportunities in smaller apps that have their target audience—or in mobile web. Most time spent will be in a few apps, but the long tail can be important for niche audiences. Mobile users will still gravitate to mobile websites for content browsing if the experience is positive.

In a December 2020 poll by Advertiser Perceptions, 57% of mobile advertising professionals said they would increase spending on podcast ads. Who Are the Players? Digital Audio. Spotify has the most users among digital audio platforms, followed by Pandora, Amazon Music, and Apple Music. Amazon will surpass Pandora in listeners next year.

Marketers are taking data collection into their own hands: Recent privacy changes have led brands to use incentives like sweepstakes and discounts to gain consumer info instead of relying on Big Tech companies.

The major social platforms hit the ground running in 2021, making substantial investments into many of today’s top social trends: audio, influencers, and short video, to name a few.

Shifts in the Type of Mobile Advertising. The pandemic affected every part of mobile advertising, but some formats suffered much more than others. Location-triggered advertising unsurprisingly faded during lockdowns.

Google and Facebook remain the dominant mobile advertising players. We projected Facebook to be the largest mobile advertising platform in 2020 at $34.84 billion, followed by Google at $28.64 billion. These figures would represent increases of 22.7% and 16.3%, respectively, over 2019—results they obviously will miss under current circumstances.