Digital Ad Spending Continues to Rise, Reaching Over $40 Billion in First Half of 2017 Alone

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) digital advertising revenue for the first half of the year topped $40 billion, coming in at a whopping $40.1 billion. Having topped linear TV ad sales in the United States for the first time in 2016, digital spending continues to rise with a 23% increase from the same period in 2016. In addition, mobile ads accounted for 54% of total digital ad revenue for the first half of 2017, up a whopping 40% from the same time last year. To put the rapid growth into perspective, this is nearly three times the spend of the first half of 2015. Unsurprisingly, digital ad sales have now topped traditional TV on a global scale.

In addition to the obvious increase of consumer viewership on digital platforms, Senior Vice President of the IAB suggests other reasoning for the consistent growth. “The hypothesis we’ve landed on isn’t so much about an expansion or reallocation of existing national advertising budgets, but an influx of small and medium-size businesses in the local market,” he said. Put simply, digital advertising provides smaller businesses the ability to advertise to consumers in a market that was once saturated by the larger corporations with TV size advertising budgets. This is great news for smaller businesses looking to dip their feet in the digital ad space.