Digital advertising predicted to outstrip legacy media spending

Spending on digital advertising in Ireland in 2017 will be higher than the sum of all other types of traditional media advertising spending, according to forecasts from eMarketer.

In its first report on the Irish market, the research group predicts that spending on digital ads will leap 12 per cent to €433 million, equating to 51.4 per cent of its estimated total for all ad spending.

Worldwide, digital is predicted to reach 38 per cent of all advertising spend this year, meaning the Irish market is already more weighted toward digital than most.

Digital ad revenues in Ireland overtook television ad revenues to become the biggest category of advertising in 2015.

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Other forecasts, such as those by the media agencies Carat and Core Media, do not envisage that digital will surpass all forms of traditional media ad spending this year – in part because their estimates for digital spending are lower and in part because their forecasts for total ad spending are higher.

‘Major milestone’

However, eMarketer said 2017 would be “a major milestone” for ad spending in Ireland, as advertisers’ enthusiasm for marketing on mobile drives digital growth and prompts digital to eclipse all other categories combined.

Mobile will claim 62 per cent of all digital ad spending in Ireland this year and will represent almost 80 per cent of digital spending by 2021, eMarketer said. By that time, just under half of overall paid advertising spend will be devoted to reaching consumers on mobile devices, it predicts.

“Thanks in part to a tech-savvy, outward-looking young population, Ireland has outpaced many other developed economies in terms of how much advertising and marketing spend is devoted to digital channels,” said eMarketer principal analyst Karin von Abrams.

The market research company was founded in 1996, at the dawn of the digital advertising industry, and was last year acquired by European media giant Axel Springer.