Our Top Five Takeaways from eMarketer's Report on US Ad Spending

eMarketer recently published their 2022 report on US Ad Spending. Their forecasts were based on 7,785 data points and 330 sources. Here are our takeaways. 

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1. Total Media Ad Spending Per Person in the US has grown from $689 in 2018, to $1,026 in 2022 (49% increase), and looks poised to continue rising to $1,115 by 2023 (62% increase). By 2024, eMarketer’s analysts project that the amount of money spent on advertising within the US will be 70% more than was spent in 2019. 

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In a future post, we plan to dig into what is driving this increase. Are advertisers buying more ads per person because they want to increase frequency or need to add channels? How much of this increase is simply from rising CPMs?

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2. On social media, spending on video continues its explosive growth rising to $34 billion which is a 42% increase from 2020 and now accounts for 46% of all social ad dollars. This is significant when compared to video accounting for just over 30% in 2019. Social video is the single fastest-growing digital advertising channel.

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3. TikTok’s massive growth in ad revenues continues with a growth of 184% between 2021 and 2022 and it is expected to take in nearly $6 billion in ad revenue this year. Representing the increased focus on social media’s vertical video advertisements, TikTok surpassed other massively popular social media platforms: Twitter and Snapchat, which are respectively expected to bring in $3 billion and $2.7 billion in ad revenue. 

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4. While video content on social media is growing, the growth in Feed Ad revenues will slow down. Facebook’s Feed ad revenue will grow 6.8% in 2022 to reach $67.6 billion, compared to a growth of 30% in 2021. Instagram’s Stories will slow in their growth as well, expanding by 13% this year to reach $35 billion. In 2021 and 2020, the ad revenue growth for stories grew by 44% and 41%, respectively. This is notable considering how Instagram Stories accounted for 10% of Meta’s worldwide revenues in 2021.

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5. 2022 will be the first year that linear TV advertising will drop to below 20% of total US ad spending, and it’s projected to be less than 15% by 2026. Five years ago, linear TV accounted for more than a third of all US ad spending. Ad spend per viewer will increase in cost due largely to 2022’s global events including the World Cup, US midterm elections, and Winter Olympics. Much of this budget is moving to Connected TV (CTV). Youtube and Hulu led the path for streaming services, reaching $8.02 billion and $4.33 billion this year, respectively.