Despite ad blocker threats, digital advertising revenues will rise to $285bn by 2020

The study found that global digital advertising spend across mobile, wearable and online devices will exceed $285bn by 2020, up from an estimated $160bn in 2016. This will be driven by an average annual growth of 22% in mobile and wearable advertising spend, as brands and retailers continue to invest in mobile consumer engagement.

Research author Sam Barker added, “Publishers, such as Facebook, are utilising their unprecedented audience knowledge to offer advertisers highly accurate targeting, thereby increasing the click through rates that advertisers are witnessing now. Publishers who are able to offer the most efficient targeting are set to become the most popular amongst advertisers.”

The report highlighted that increased ad revenues will be further driven by faster real time bidding processes from exchanges such as the Rubicon Project and Fiksu. By streamlining the bidding process, page load times are reduced – increasing the user experience.

Mobile becomes the biggest platform

Last year saw ad revenues from mobile platforms surpassing those from online platforms, offering publishers the opportunity to capitalise on a sector that is both growing and has a comparatively low adoption of mobile ad blockers.

However, mobile ad blocking adoption is expected to increase over the next five years, as users bring the benefits of the technology onto their mobile devices. The research also warned that publishers will have to contend with the introduction of network level ad blocking, currently being deployed by the UK mobile operator Three.

The whitepaper, ‘Digital Advertisers vs The Ad Blockers’ is now available to download from the Juniper website, together with further details of the full research. Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.