Where are B2B advertisers allocating their ad buys?
B2B advertisers are increasingly shifting their ad budgets from print—which, despite a 20% year-over-year decline and fewer brands advertising, still accounted for $9.75 billion in 2016—to digital platforms, with significant growth in high-CPM native, video, and email ads in early 2017, prompting publishers to pivot from shrinking print markets to expanding digital offerings to capture market share.
Knowledge is key to enhancing your ad sales; the more you know about your prospect’s purchasing patterns, the more powerful your pitch. Are your prospects purchasing print, digital, or cross-platform packages? Learn how the B2B ad sales industry is trending.
A lot has been made of print as a dying industry, and with print spend down 20% year-over-year in Q1 2017, the numbers show diminishing power. But B2B print still holds a big piece of the ad budgets with $9.75 billion spent in print for 2016.
Print and digital are on divergent paths. While 24 out of 26 categories saw fewer brands advertising in 2016 compared to the previous year, 17 out of 26 categories saw an increase in the number of brands advertising. Brands are becoming more cost-conscious with targeted campaigns on fewer sites/properties that reduce ad waste. The heavyweight print advertisers have reduced the number of publications they place in, and the number of brands running print advertisements is down 10%.
Nonetheless, it is important to discuss where ad dollars are shifting—to the digital space.
In contrast, digital is up across the board in Q1 2017 compared to the same period last year. The biggest shift occurred in high-CPM placements: native advertisers are up 17%, video advertisers are up 36%, and email advertisers are up 13%. Furthermore, of the 53,620 advertisers that ran digital ads in 2016, 61% of those did not run print.
With print advertisers running in fewer and fewer publications, it is increasingly likely that industry leaders will eat up more market share, while smaller publications miss out. It would behoove these publishers to engage proactively with industry trends. Rather than continue to compete for a dwindling share in print, publishers could utilize those resources to expand digital offerings. This would allow publishers to begin building lasting relationships in an expanding digital market.
For a more detailed look into top B2B categories in video, mobile, programmatic, and native, download the "What’s Trending in B2B" report.
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