3 min read

The 4% | Edition 007

Trends, Forecasts and Fights.

Read on to get a helicopter view of where digital advertising is and where it's going.

YouTube Spend

PwC and the IAB put out their forecasts/actuals on digital advertising spend in Australia. The TL;DR Digital Advertising spend already past the 2021 spend prediction.

There was debate around how digital spend is calculated of course, however there were big punchlines like YouTube spend in Australia is 4x BVOD still!

The YouTube numbers caused a stir, the hilarious quote from this article;

The sticking point for most is how much YouTube generates directly from smaller advertisers versus big brands via media agency groups. The latter is worth $800m-$1bn and some agency execs think a similar chunk YouTube’s  revenue coming from small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) is too high. “Look at most of the ads you see on YouTube and they’re mostly big brands,” says one media buyer. “I can’t see SMBs spending that much.”

I'm sure I speak on behalf of all Independent Media Agencies and their SMBs that we're incredibly happy for them to underestimate our usage of the platform!

I think the closer reality is that Big Brands via Media Agency Groups like to purchase YouTube like they buy TV. Having little understanding of how digital media buyers maximise the YouTube channel for our clients.

YouTube eyes $2bn in Australian ad revenues as its adloads surge; ‘incremental reach’ battle hots up | Mi3
YouTube is marching towards a $2bn revenue milestone in Australia if the latest figures from PwC and IAB are worth their salt.

Shopify Future of Commerce | Rising Acquisition Costs

Quality content in here for all eCommerce & Retail Brands on the Shopify Future of Commerce webinar.

The Future of Commerce Digital Event Asia Pacific
Want to learn about the biggest commerce trends in Asia Pacific? Join our live webinar to dive into research-based trends and practical tips.

There is also a PDF download that is worth a save and share with your whole teams.

If the survey results are to be believed the overall reaction from eCom/Retail brands to changes in Facebook is to be cutting budgets, however the majority of the cuts are coming from Brand.

That’s why 70% of marketers who are cutting their budgets in 2022 will sacrifice investments in brand building, and only 13% will reduce performance marketing spending.

They quote the 60/40 split from Binet & Field as the right mix of short & long term. We don't subscribe to this split for everyone, as different life stages of brands require different investment strategies.

If budgets are reducing, we do subscribe to not cutting purely from Top of Funnel. You should be maintaining the % split or any short term gains will be, well, short lived.

Shopify Future of Commerce | Personalisation

There was some info on the understanding of personalisation for brands vs consumers. Not surprisingly, Brands felt they were doing more personalisation than Consumers were feeling.

Forty-four percent of consumers say they’re OK with brands they like using their personal information to deliver relevant content and offers

With the decrease in consumers 'opted-in' for personalised ads on social platforms it will be interesting to see how this number rises or falls.

It's also curious to us that Advertising alone would be viewed as 'Personalised', it feels much closer to an Email Marketing / Lifecycle Marketing responsibility. Using Ads to acquire new leads generically, allowing your ongoing communication and shopping behaviour to segment and tailor personalised experiences.

Pinterest Presents | Advertising Updates

And the final big webinar/forecast was Pinterest with their Pinterest Presents event this week

A couple of Beta launches named the biggest being Your Shop and of course a range of Tik-Tok style organic updates

It was curious to see the Usage stats dropping, while our early testing of the platform is showing incremental revenue gains for Product Design brands, appears post-pandemic and growth of Tik-Tok is hurting Pinterest.

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