Digital ad spend, customer experience, brand safety: 5 killer stats to start your week

1. Digital ad spend to reach $520bn by 2023

Digital advertising spend is predicted to reach $520bn (£411bn) by 2023, climbing from $294bn (£233bn) this year.

This marks an average annual growth of 15% over the next five years, with the rise driven by the use of AI-based programmatic advertising.

Amazon is expected to capture 8% of global digital ad spend by 2023, rising from 3% in 2018. The online retail giant’s advertising revenues are estimated to reach $40bn (£32bn) marking a growth of 470% from 2018.

Meanwhile, Google’s advertising revenues will exceed $230bn (£182bn) by 2023. However, the company’s global market share of digital ad spend will fall one percentage point over the next four years due to the growth of competitors, including Amazon and Baidu.

Source: Juniper Research

2. Two-thirds of the UK’s top 100 advertisers exposed to potentially non-brand safe environments

Ads from two-thirds of the UK’s top 100 advertisers were shown in places that are considered to be non-brand safe in early 2019.

The study, which looked at the state of brand safety in the UK programmatic market over the first quarter of 2019, found 65% of the UK’s top advertisers had been exposed to potentially non-brand safe environments.

Categories most at risk of ads appearing in non-safe environments are ecommerce (20%), charities and social platforms (11%), food and drink (11%), home and garden (10%), and beauty and fitness (9%).

The types of YouTube pages where UK brands are appearing alongside include content involving extremism, fake news and ideology (20%), violence and weapons (19%), gambling (8%) and sensational, sensitive and profane content (4%).

Source: Ebiquity

3. Supermarket sales see three years of growth

Supermarket sales grew by 1.4% year on year during the 12 weeks to 16 June, marking three years of continuous growth dating back to July 2016. However, the growth rate was down on this time last year, as a wet start to the summer and difficult comparisons with last year due to the run-up to the men’s FIFA World Cup hindered growth.

Aldi attracted an additional 883,000 shoppers through its doors during the 12-week period, with sales up 9.3% and its market share hitting 7.9%. Rival discounter Lidl saw its sales rise 7.5%%, lifting its market share to 5.7%.

Ocado was the fastest growing grocer, with sales growth of 11.3%, comfortable ahead of the overall ecommerce market which is growing at 6%. However, only 3% of British shoppers currently buy from the retailer.

Source: Kantar

4. First Direct leads the way in customer experience

British brands are slowly but steadily improving their customer experience, with retail and financial services leading the way.

The Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) analysis reveals the second year of improved performance, with the overall CEE score increasing from 7.13 in 2018, to 7.21 this year. This follows a record low of 7.08 in 2017.

First Direct is the number one ranked brand with a score of 8.28, followed by Monzo (8.13), Lush, (8.10), Richer Sounds (8.08) and John Lewis Finance, which rounded out the top five with a score of 8.02.

The best performing sector is non-grocery retail and grocery retail, which both attained a score of 7.40. The public sector is the worst performing, with a score of 6.49.

Source: KPMG Nunwood

5. Public says social media companies have responsibility to take down fake news

The vast majority (85%) of people believe social media companies have a responsibility to remove fake news.

More than three-quarters (79%) also say social media companies should be monitoring for fake news on their platforms, while 39% believe the government shares this responsibility.

Additionally, 51% of adults with a social media account say they’ve seen something they would consider to be fake news in the past three months, with 31% saying they’ve been exposed to fake news in the past week.

This prevalence of fake news on social media is the likely cause of declining confidence in the accuracy of its content. In 2014, 62% of people trusted content on social media but this figure has fallen to 34% today, with only 1% of people saying they are confident that information on social media is accurate or genuine.

Source: Chartered Institute of Marketing