Commentary

IAB Buyers' Survey: CTV To Lead 2023 Ad Growth, At 14.4%, Linear To Dip 6.3%

Amid an overall slowdown in advertising spending in 2023, connected TV is expected to see 14.4% year-over-year growth — the highest rate of any medium — while linear TV spending is expected to decline by 6.3% , according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2023 outlook report, based on a survey of 223 brand and agency investment decision executives fielded between Oct. 18 and Nov. 7. 

The contrasting projections sync with viewership trends: According to Nielsen, streaming viewership surpassed cable TV’s for the first time as of this past July.  

Overall spending growth is projected at  5.9% — down substantially from the respondents’ average of estimated spending growth of 9% in 2022. 

Next to CTV, the media projected to see the largest spending growth are paid search/SEM (8.9%), podcasts (8.1%), digital video excluding CTV (6.5%), social media (6.5%) and digital audio excluding podcasts (5.9%). 

advertisement

advertisement

Digital video, including CTV, is projected to win a 22.4% share of total ad spend — up from 19.3% in 2022. And despite the decline in its growth rate, linear TV is projected to see a modest bump in share, from 13.3% to 14%. Paid search’s share is also projected to grow, from 13.7%  to 16%. 

Among media channels expected to see share declines: social media (from 16.6% in 2022 to 15.9% in 2023), digital display (from 16.4% to 13.1%), and traditional media including radio, print, out-of-home and direct mail (from 8.9% to 6.7%). 

Also reflecting streaming’s growing influence, buyers’ most-cited area of focus for 2023 is cross-platform measurement, with 55% saying that will give this factor significant/somewhat more focus in the year ahead. 

Other key areas of focus include ad placement with publishers with first-party data, first-party data acquisition/partnerships, marketing mix modeling, attribution modeling, contextual ads and shopable ads.

Buyers’ most-cited top three goals for media investments in 2023 are acquiring new customers (61%), increasing brand equity (43%) and improving media efficiency (35%).

Two-thirds of buyers (63%) say that they will be evaluating and reforecasting media buys more frequently next year, 19% say they now have contingency plans, and 13% say they are no longer budgeting for the long term. But nearly a quarter (23%) report that their media-buying practices will not change in the year ahead.

Nearly half (45%) report that they adjust media plans on a monthly basis, 34% quarterly, 14% weekly, 6% daily and 1% biannually.

Next story loading loading..