Publishers nervous about what advertisers are planning should be heartened by some of the findings in Digital Advertising Trends in 2023, a study released Tuesday by Smartly.io, working
with Insights Worldwide Business Research.
Of the brands polled, 60% say they will invest more in digital advertising tools and technology in 2023. And 49% will spend on programmatic
advertising in general.
That means there’s money on the table: 41% of the respondents are spending $5 million to $10 million on digital advertising this year, and 27% will budget from
$10 million to $20 million. In addition, 22% will spend more than $20 million.
But there are numerous pain points for digital advertisers that publishers should be aware of, including:
- Macroeconomic factors—50%
- Increased competition—49%
- Maximizing efficiency & ROI—48%
- Producing
enough creative—48%
- Measurement and attribution—47%
- Managing a growing number of channels and platforms—38%
- Privacy/targeting changes—37%
- Securing sufficient budget—35%
- Ensuring we have the right tools in place to execute our strategies
successfully—29%
- Lack of talent/the need to expand teams through hiring—11%
Of the companies polled, 37% spend 26% to 49% of their marketing
budgets on social media advertising, and 9% budget 50%.
The respondents are spending the most on these single platforms:
- Google Ads—27%
- Instagram—24%
- Facebook—17%
- YouTube—14%
- Connected TV (CTV)—6%
- Tik
Tok—5%
- Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH)—3%
- Snapchat—2%
- LinkedIn—1%
- Twitter—1%
The big increases will go to:
- YouTube—79%
- Google Ads—66%
- Tik-Tok—52%
- Instagram—75%
- Facebook—64%
Note: only 51% are buying ads on Twitter, versus 71%
last year.
Meanwhile, 68% say their digital ad creation involves time-consuming manual processes, and 74% say the same about their campaign delivery.
However, most use automation. Technology to at least some degree. They say:
- Yes—we automate campaign creation and optimization sufficiently and
successfully—31%
- Yes—We automate at least part of this process, but it needs improvement—55%
- No—but we are interested in
automating at least part of this process—14%
As for creative, digital advertisers plan to increase their usage of these virtual assets:
- Motion
creative (e.g., animations, videos, reels)—33%
- Static creative (e.g., photos, images)—24%
- Innovative creative (e.g., 3D/AR/Lens,
Dall-e)—24%
- Creator content/influencer content—14%
- Neither//this does not apply—5%
When it comes to best
practices, 52% always conduct formal testing as part of the creative process. But 42% do it only sometimes and 6% do so rarely.
But advertisers face these challenges (respondents
were asked to list their top three):
- Personalizing create and making sure each variation adheres to each platform—38%
- Time for creativity and finding
new ideas—38%
- Creating assets based on historical performance data—33%
- Receiving data on creative performance—32%
- The review and approval process happening in many different places—32%
- Testing creative concepts and variations—31%
- Sourcing assets
to produce the ads (UGC, stock image, sounds, etc.)—27%
- Number of assets needed and the manual work involved—23%
- Ad rejected by the platforms
and time to fix the assets—21%
- Finding the best practices for each channel or platform—16%
- Ensuring I’m following guidelines on each
asset—9%
The WBR Insights research team surveyed 100 respondents from the U.S. and Canada, all at the director or above, including the C-suite.