One thing that all media experts agree on is that in 2019, in the US, digital media will outspend traditional media and that trend will increase over time. As you can see from this chart from eMarketer.com. So where does that leave your company? Many companies that have been in place for years have not kept pace with their digital campaigns and that leaves them in the lurch as to how to expand their market share. This does not mean that traditional media is dead, but it does mean it is time to evaluate where your investments are not paying off and moving some of those resources to digital marketing including email marketing, adwords & search, video marketing and digital display.
The research also emphasizes that in spite of the dominance of Google and Facebook as a percentage of the expenditures US digital spending, their extreme dominance of the U.S. online ad market is slipping for the first time, even as their revenue continues to grow, because Amazon is eating into their market share as we move forward.
For instance, Google’s share of online U.S. ad spend is expected to drop to 37.2 percent in 2019 from 38.2 percent 12 months earlier. Meanwhile, Facebook’s market share is expected to increase slightly to 22.1 percent in 2019. eMarketer analysts noted the majority of that growth will be driven by Instagram–a byproduct of the privacy challenges it faced over 2018. The combined share of the US market was 60 percent Facebook and Google in 2018. However it is expected that Amazon’s ad business will grow by more than 50 percent in 2019 and its share of the digital advertising market will hit 8.8 percent.
Because Amazon continues to rise in their reputation of trust, Amazon is a major benefit to advertisers, especially consumer-packaged goods and direct to consumers brands. That gives them a lot of purchasing habit data they can share with their sellers and benefit when those sellers use Amazon advertising to help their brands get in front of folks already on their platform to buy something else. This often is in the form of their products showing up in the suggested purchase feed. That is where Amazon says “people who viewed this item or purchased this item also viewed this item”. Since some of those brands also use Amazon fulfillment, that makes Amazon their one-stop marketing tool. Of course we all know that when there is one company responsible for so much of your sales, it often gets more and more expensive over time.
If you do nothing else, it is time for you to take stock of what you spent last year and what you expect to spend this year to re-evaluate your marketing investments. Join my monthly webinars and workshops to help you create a more balanced media mix. Determine where to expand this year adding more effective digital media tools while getting more results for your marketing dollars.
If you need help creating more effective Email Marketing in 2019, contact us by email or call us at 310-791-6300. To get more done with your Marketing efforts, create a media mix that marries your most effective traditional tools with digital media tools. This mix will help you reach your target market more effectively, and generate the required number of exposures to elicit sales or your expected results.
Liz Harsch is a media planner and trainer for small business owners with Constant Contact, SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and MWD and County outreach partners, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce for over 10 years. She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and provides marketing, training and consulting to identify marketing and media alternatives for business owners. She can be reached at her Torrance, CA office at 310-791-6300 or by email at liz@adteamla.com. You can also see her upcoming training workshops calendar at http://adteamla.com/facebook.