Mobile Spend By Local Advertisers Forecast To Hit $6.5B By 2019
- by Ben Frederick @mp_benfred, October 9, 2015
Digital’s share in local is growing, and it’s taking mobile with it. In 2014, $900 million or about 21% of the total spend in mobile targeting local audiences came from local advertisers. By 2019, total mobile spend by local advertisers will grow to $6.5 billion or about 36% of the total spend in mobile targeting local audiences.
Citing a statistic from BIA/Kelsey, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Local Buyer’s Guide shows predictions that advertisers will spend a total of $139.4 billion on local advertising in 2015. Online and mobile make up the two biggest portions of that spend -- at 11.5% and 4.8%, respectively.
By 2019, local advertising spend is predicted to equal $157.7 billion.
Local and location are often mixed together, but the IAB has defined location as the tech and data side and local as the people and places side of the equation.
“What it means to be a marketer today is very different from what it meant to be a marketer even three to five years ago,” says Joe Laszlo, senior director of mobile marketing and excellence at IAB. “Marketers can’t just be focused on the “art” of marketing, but also need to focus on the tech side/science side of marketing, in smaller businesses especially.”
Local advertising encompasses a number of different channels beyond just digital, and if advertisers want to capitalize on this growth in spending (as well as cleaner and more accurate location data), they need to leverage local digital into an omnichannel model.
But this can be very difficult in digital, as marketers need to understand programmatic, location, mobile and any other channels, and the manner in which consumers engage with their brand if they want a successful marketing effort. Or at least find partners who understand those things.
The digital space, especially programmatic, has seen a lot of consolidation in the recent months. This can make forging long-term relationships difficult as businesses get bought or alter strategies.
It all ads up to what can be a frustrating and confusing space for any marketer involved, regardless of the size of their business, hence the guide.
Laszlo’s advice: “Don’t make long-term contracts or plans because everything does change rapidly. Focus on fairly short-term plans. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s going to be different in a couple of years.”
