• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 7, 2018

With Amazon and Bing nipping at their heels, Google and YouTube continue to take share of the search market -- particularly on mobile devices and in local markets, where rivals remain weak.

BIA/Kelsey released numbers Monday for local search ad spend on Google and YouTube, estimating that the two combined will reach $19 billion nationwide this year. BIA Advisory Services suggests Google will represent close to 40% of local digital advertising across all markets. By 2022, BIA projects local advertising on Google properties will exceed $27 billion nationwide.

In fact, BIA estimates that local advertising on Google properties will exceed the total local advertising generated by all 11,044 commercial radio stations in the U.S., and rival the amount generated by all 1,282 full power commercial television stations in the U.S.

By 2022, BIA estimates local Google advertising will nearly double the over-the-air advertising spend for the entire radio industry. 

The advertising firm Merkle published a report in April that suggests Google Local Inventory Ads (LIAs) produced nearly 7% of desktop Google Shopping clicks in in the first quarter of 2018, up from 1% a year earlier.

Although the format is somewhat complicated to use compared with traditional product listing ads, Merkle says the format has slightly inched up. LIAs produced 15% of mobile Google Shopping clicks in the first quarter of 2018, up from 14% in the first quarter of 2017.

Overall, eMarketer estimates that marketers will spend 7.4% more on media this year globally, reaching $628.63 billion in 2018.

In their latest report, "Global Ad Spending: The eMarketer Forecast for 2018," eMarketer analysts estimate digital media will account for 43.5% of investments. eMarketer attributes the rise to an increase in the amount that consumers will spend through online channels and a shift in viewership from traditional TV to digital.

By 2022, the analyst and data firm estimates that digital’s share of total advertising will reach 53.9%, up from 52.1% in 2021 and 49.9% in 2020.

Global media spending will grow steadily through 2022, despite political and economic concerns.

North America will remain the top advertising market in 2018 at $232.48 billion, with a 37% share of worldwide total media.

Asia-Pacific will place second in regional media spend, with $210.43 billion and one-third of global ad business.

eMarketer previously forecast that Asia-Pacific would surpass North America in ad spend by 2019 -- but as a result of stronger-than-expected 2017 growth in North America and currency depreciation against the US dollar, this will not happen.

Asia-Pacific and North America will account for 70.5% of the $628.63 billion global ad spend in 2018. eMarketer attributes the rise to an increase in consumer spending and the FIFA World Cup. A combination of both will spur worldwide ad growth of 7.4% this year.