Digital ad spend to rise by 77 per cent by 2023 to $520bn: Juniper study

Total spend on digital advertising will reach $520bn (£409bn) by 2023, rising from $294bn this year, according to new analysis from Juniper Research. This is an average annual growth of 15 per cent over the next five years, driven by the use of AI-based programmatic advertising to deliver highly targeted ads. For the purposes of Juniper’s study, digital advertising includes online, mobile browsing, in-app, SMS, DOOH (Digital-Out-of-Home) and OTT (Over-the-Top) TV services.

The study, Future Digital Advertising: Artificial Intelligence & Advertising Fraud 2019-2023 found that Amazon’s emerging digital advertising business, driven by its unparalleled consumer retail data, will drive the company to capture 8 per cent of global digital ad spend, worth $40bn, by 2023, up from 3 per cent in 2018. In value terms, this will represent an increase of 470 per cent between 2018 and 2023. The company will leverage its retail data and heavy investment in machine learning to offer efficient targeting via its advertising platforms, and attract users from the established duopoly of Google and Facebook.

According to the study, Google’s advertising revenues will exceed $230bn by 2023. Despite this, it forecasts that the company’s global market share of digital advertising spend will fall 1 per cent over the next four years due to the growth of competing platforms, including Amazon and Baidu.

The report anticipates that advertising platforms will focus on increasing access to contextual advertising traffic data to maximise the efficiency of machine learning for targeting abilities. As a result of these efforts, 75 per cent of global online and mobile ads are forecast to be delivered via AI-based programmatic advertising by 2023.

“Giving alogrithms access to the vast amounts of data generated by advertising traffic, including purchasing habits, user buckets and geographical location, is critical to enabling advertisers to secure a return on their ad spend,” said report author, Sam Barker.