Digital Advertising
Digital-first brands have driven much of the sector’s growth
Much of the growth in spending on digital advertising in recent years has been driven by digital-first brands, whose own business growth rates should necessarily slow as they mature and see their growth rates converge with the rest of the economy.
However, most large brands will continue to rely on digital media to supplement brand-building activities that are often centred on TV or other offline activities, focusing on the use of digital media to drive deeper engagement with consumers who may already have a view on what a brand means to them.
Digital media has the capacity to build brands, subject to an appropriate creative strategy, but ongoing challenges remain around digital media for brands. This includes the increasingly “toxic” environments of platforms that do not curate content or other advertisers, with the widespread availability of inauthentic content (including fake ads) and other polarizing or extreme content.
Measurement remains another problem, as fragmented, incomplete and often low-quality sources of data make it difficult to assess the metrics that brand-focused marketers want to rely upon in order to manage their budgets well in digital environments.
As brands increasingly invest in digital business strategies, including direct-to-consumer concepts, sales via third-party e-commerce channels, and focus on driving consumers to digital experiences (including websites or branded content), more growth in spending on digital media will occur. Most brands currently generate only a small percentage of their revenues from e-commerce, but there are some brands pushing toward half or more of their revenues from non-traditional environments, demonstrating possibilities yet to emerge.