US Digital Ad Spend Hits New $49.5 Billion High In 2014; Mobile & Social See Greatest Growth

Digital advertising spend set a new record in 2014, according to the latest figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, rising to $49.5 billion in the United States. The greatest segments of growth were in mobile and social, though search remained the biggest overall ad spend segment.

The chart below from the IAB report released today shows the year-by-year growth since 2005. In 2013, overall spend was $42.8 billion. That climbed to $49.5 billion in 2015:

The IAB said that mobile advertising grew 76% year-over-year from 2013 to 2014, the biggest growth segment. That was followed by social media advertising, with 57% growth. Search revenues grew only 3%, but search remained the largest overall advertising segment by far with spend of $18.4 billion in 2014 or 38% over the overall share.

On a quarterly basis, the last quarter of 2014 set a new record by crossing the $14 billion mark for the first time ($14.15 billion in spend, to be exact):

Search spend would be even higher if the amount of mobile search spend were added into the “search” total. The IAB breaks out any mobile spend into its own “slice” of the overall ad spend pie. The mobile share itself is broken out and shows 48% of that is done on search, which translates into another 24% of overall search spend. Add that to searches 38% of desktop spend, and search has 62% of overall ad spend:

After search, display is the next biggest spend area, making up 27% of spend or 28% as the IAB says elsewhere. Display itself is described as banners, video, rich media and sponsorships, all of which are further broken out — pretty much everything but classifieds, lead generation and mobile. Mobile is the third biggest, at 25%. But as said, “mobile” is really spend pulled out of other areas — search and display.

Below, I’m taking the IAB figures and interpreting them in terms of overall, mobile and desktop breakdowns. I’ll explain each chart, which I think gives a better picture of spend using the IAB’s figures than the IAB itself gives. My apologies for the poor formatting of the charts. I wanted to do them in text rather than images, so that they’re more accessible to everyone.

Search 50% Of Spend, Display At 40%

To get the figures above, I took what I know to be desktop and mobile figures for search, display and other and combined these. As you can see, search makes up 50% of online ad spend, with display close behind at 40%. The charts below give details on how the chart above was created. It will also explain why this chart has a $49.6 billion spend total versus the $49.5 billion the IAB itself says (a tiny difference that, in short, is due to rounding).

Desktop Versus Mobile: Part 1

This page at the IAB shows figures for things like “Search,” “Display” and “Lead Generation.” However, those are really figures for desktop-only spend in those categories. Mobile spend for any of those categories is pulled out and put into an overall mobile spend figure.

Desktop Versus Mobile: Part 2

From the chart above, I already knew the desktop figures for search, display and other. To get the mobile breakdowns, I went to a chart in the IAB report that’s also shown above, where the mobile slice is broken down. That chart says 45% of mobile spend was on search, 51% on display and the remaining 5% was other. So, I took 45% of the overall mobile spend figure to get a “Mobile Search” amount and did similar for display and other. Because the percentages aren’t precise, they introduce that small rounding error that causes the total to be $49.6 billion.

The Flavors Of Display

The IAB also breaks down what’s consolidated into an overall “display” figure, though it really means desktop display. The chart above explains this.

The Most Popular Ad Formats & Mediums, By Revenue Spend

The chart below I will show in image format, because all the figures are above already. It takes every category of search spend from the IAB report and ranks them in order of popularity by revenue spend:

You can see from this how desktop still dominates spend in individual categories. Mobile, while a big overall chunk at 25%, has as its biggest individual slice mobile display, at only 16%. It also shows how little, at least according to the IAB, that’s being spent on video. It makes up only 7% of overall spend. Email isn’t shown, by the way, because the IAB no longer reports it. What the IAB had for email before was pretty tiny.

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About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.