Digital ad expenditure in Europe reached €64,8bn in 2019

"IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, announced at its virtual Interact conference today that digital advertising grew 12.3 percent in 2019 to €64.8bn, driven by strong growth in out-stream video, mobile and social spend. On average €4bn has been added to the digital advertising market every year since 2006.
2020 Digital Advertising Forecast
Given the impact that COVID-19 that had on the industry’s operations and investments, the 2019 results were accompanied by a 2020 forecast for digital investment by IAB Europe’s Chief Economist Dr. Daniel Knapp. In its April 2020 forecast, the IMF predicted that Covid-19 and the global lockdown will spark the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Knapp modelled his forecasts on macroeconomic indicators, paired with industry data to estimate a decline of 16.3% for Europe (including the UK). However, Knapp highlighted that digital is looking to be the least affected advertising media, predicting a decline by -5.5% in 2020 in Europe compared to a stronger contraction (-21.3%) for other media.
2019 Digital Advertising Investment
The AdEx Benchmark study is the definitive guide to advertising expenditure in Europe, covering 28 markets, and is now in its fourteenth year. In 2019, a total of twenty-one markets experienced double-digit year-on-year growth.
Video grew by nearly 30 percent to almost €10bn; out-stream was the driving force behind this growth with an increase of 36 percent. In some markets out-stream experienced growth of more than 40 percent, for example Finland, Greece and the UK.
Social is fueling display growth across Europe, up 25.6 percent year-on-year with double-digit growth in all twenty-eight markets. Search remains the largest online advertising category in terms of revenue with a growth of 11.8 percent and a market value of €28bn. Total mobile ad spend grew by 24.9 percent in 2019 to exceed €30bn to account for nearly half (47 percent) of all digital ad spend in Europe.
[...]
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study divides the digital ad market into three categories: Display, Search and Classifieds and Directories. Growth in these advertising formats has been underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns.
[...]
CEE continues to dominate the growth in Europe and in 2019, as in 2018. The top five largest growth markets all came from the CEE region:
Serbia – 28.4 percent
Ukraine – 28.0 percent
Belarus – 25.2 percent
Croatia – 22.3 percent
Turkey– 19.1 percent

Top 10 rankings (by market size) are:
UK – €21.4bn
Germany – €9.4bn
France – €6.1bn
Russia – €4.9bn
Italy – €3.2bn
Spain – €3.2bn
Sweden – €2.3bn
Netherlands – €2.3bn
Switzerland – €1.8bn
Norway – €1.3bn"
Source:  Press release from IAB Europe, 3rd June 2020
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Digital ad spend across Europe grew to €55bn in 2018

"IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising ecosystem, announced at its annual Interact conference today in Warsaw that digital advertising grew 13.9 percent in 2018 to €55.1bn, driven by strong growth in video, mobile and social spend. This is the fastest growth since 2011 and has seen the market more than double in size since 2012.
The AdEx Benchmark study is the definitive guide to the state of the European digital advertising market, covering 28 markets, and is now in its thirteenth year. In 2018, a total of twenty-one markets saw double-digit year-on-year growth
Out-stream video and mobile both dominated results in 2018, as they both grew by double-digits in all twenty-eight markets in the study. Out-stream video grew by 44.7 percent on average, compared to in-stream at 19.7 percent. Overall, video grew by 30.9 percent, to €7.6bn, accounting for 33 percent of the display market.
Search remains the largest online advertising category in terms of revenue with a growth of 12.5 percent and a market value of €25bn.
Social is fueling display growth across Europe, growing 33.7 percent year-on-year and now accounts for 49 percent of display.
Total mobile ad spend grew by 31.4 percent in 2018, to €22.8bn, and now accounts for 41 percent of all digital ad spend across Europe.
[...]
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study divides the digital ad market into three categories: Display, Search and Classifieds and Directories. Growth in these advertising formats has been underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns. In 2018, Display has closed the gap with Search, growing by 17.5 percent to account for 42.2 percent of all spend.
[...]
In 2018, the top five largest growth markets all came from the CEE region:
Ukraine – 26.9 percent
Russia – 24.9 percent
Belarus – 23.6 percent
Czech Republic – 20.9 percent
Serbia – 20.1 percent
Norway entered the top 10 in 2018, with further gains by Spain and Sweden.
Top 10 rankings (by market size)
UK – €18.4bn
Germany – €7.2bn
France – €5.2bn
Russia – €4.1bn
Italy – €2.9bn
Netherlands – €2.2bn
Spain – €2.2bn
Sweden – €2.1bn
Switzerland – €2.0bn
Norway – €1.1bn"

Source:  Press release from IAB Europe, 4th June 2019

The number of homes with only one paid video subscription is falling

"The number of people with more than one online streaming service is continuing to grow according to the latest consumer research from Ampere Analysis. In a survey of 33,000 Internet users across 16 countries, more than half (50 per cent) of respondents in 13 of those countries had at least one SVoD service, while in 10 of the 16 markets, more than half of SVoD homes were SVoD Stackers – those taking more than one service.  As more major players – such as Disney – enter the SVoD marketplace in 2019 and beyond, the billion-dollar question is, just how many services will consumers pay for?
The Facts
Netflix continues to be the dominant service, leading in almost all countries surveyed in terms of the number of subscribers
Amazon Prime only beats Netflix adoption levels in Japan and Germany – and even here, Netflix is the second choice
This is not just a marketplace where just two global SVoD giants battle for supremacy. Local players perform well in Sweden, Turkey and the Netherlands, and elsewhere, others are eyeing the market opportunity."

Source:  Advanced Television, 21st February 2019

Digital ad spend in Europe doubled from 2012 to 2017

"At its annual Interact conference today, IAB Europe announced that digital advertising grew 13.2% in 2017 to €48bn, driven by strong growth in social, mobile and video investment.
The AdEx Benchmark study is the definitive guide to the state of the European digital advertising market and is now in its twelfth year. A total of twenty markets grew double-digit. Mobile dominated with double-digit growth in all 27 markets in the study. Mobile display grew by more than 40% and now accounts for 42% of total display advertising whilst video now accounts for more than a quarter of total display. Social grew at a similar rate at 38% and increased its share of display whilst video grew by 4x the rate of non-video display at 35%. The growth in video is driven by out-stream advertising which experienced a 73.4% growth compared with in-stream at 6.9%.
[...]
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study divides the digital ad market into three categories: Display, Search and Classifieds and Directories. Growth in these advertising formats has been underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns.
Display advertising outperformed search and classifieds with a growth rate of 14.9% to a value of €19.3bn. Search is still the largest online advertising category in terms of revenue with a growth of 14.4% and a market value of €21.9bn.
[...]
The top 3 individual growth markets reveal strong growth in the CEE region:
Belarus – 33.9%
Serbia – 23.7%
Russia – 21.9%
There was also strong growth in the most mature markets (in line with or above the European average) such as the UK (14.3%), Norway (16.6%), Sweden (18.4%), Switzerland (12.5%) and Denmark (9.7%) demonstrating that maturity doesn’t hinder opportunity for further innovation and growth.
Top 10 rankings (by market size)
UK – €15.6bn
Germany – €6.6bn
France – €5.1bn
Russia – €3.3bn
Italy – €2.6bn
Sweden– €1.8bn
Netherlands – €1.8bn
Switzerland – €1.8bn
Spain – €1.8bn
Belgium – €1bn"

Source:  Data from the IAB & PwC, 23rd May 2018

Smart devices - phones and tablets - per head in Europe

"Flurry from Yahoo currently tracks over 725,000 apps across 564 million devices in Europe. All Europeans love their smart devices, but there are marked differences in usage and preferences across the continent. Let’s take a look.
For this analysis, we focused on the top 10 European countries by total population: Russia, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, and Sweden. We next compared the total population and Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of these countries, to the number of iOS and Android devices Flurry Analytics tracked in each of these countries throughout October 2015. GNI is a measure of a country’s wealth, as calculated by the World Bank in constant US dollars."

Smart TV ownership in broadband homes in Europe

Source:  Parks Associates, 20th October 2015

Germany has gone past 'Peak Telephony'

"In 2014, fixed line networks saw 154 billion outgoing minutes in Germany which is 9 billion minutes less than last year. On the mobile side they've been observing an increase of 1 billion minutes. In total that's 8 billion minutes less than the previous year, which is about -3%. The trend has been going on for quite a while now. In 2010, combined fixed and mobile outgoing voice minutes were at 295 billion compared to 265 minutes in 2014. That's 11% less over that time frame."

Source:  Mobile Society, 22nd May 2015

Note - An earlier example of other markets

Digital Ad Spend hit €30.7bn in Europe in 2014; Mobile is 17% of display spend

"At the 9th edition of its annual Interact conference IAB Europe today announced that online advertising grew 11.6% to a market value of €30.7bn in 2014.
The AdEx Benchmark research – the definitive guide to the state of the European online advertising market – revealed that online advertising achieved double digit growth for a fifth consecutive year.
All markets participating in the study recorded positive growth and twenty markets grew double-digit. Mobile and video ad spend continued on their strong growth curves and are now a significant proportion of display and search ad spend.
Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe, commented “The AdEx Benchmark results highlight the importance of digital advertising for growth in Europe’s economy. We need to ensure that digital advertising enables the European digital sector to compete across the world.”
Display, Search and Classifieds
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study splits the online ad market into 3 broad segments: Display, Search and Classifieds and Directories. Growth in these online advertising formats has been underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns.
Display advertising outperformed other categories with a growth rate of 15.2% and the pace of Display growth further accelerated versus 2013. In 2014, the total value of the Display ad market was €10.9bn.
Search showed growth of 10.8% - and a market value of €14.7 billion. It continues to be the largest online advertising format in terms of revenue, but has recorded a deceleration in its growth rate in the last three years.
The 2014 Classifieds and Directories market grew 5.8% to €4.9bn showing growth of 5.8%. Classifieds & Directories benefitted from the improvement in the economy, but is increasingly challenged by Paid-for-search and Data-driven Display to compete for advertising budgets.
Mobile and video are driving growth 
Mobile now accounts for 17.7% of the display market, with a growth rate of 72.5% compared with 2013.
Online video advertising also showed strong growth, now representing 15.1% of the display market.
Eleni Marouli, a Senior Analyst at IHS and author of the report, “The sustained double-digit growth in online advertising in the last five years demonstrates the continual evolution of the online advertising market. The two formats driving this growth in 2014 were mobile and video. The rise of mobile and video is a reflection of the investment and innovation of the online advertising industry to meet advertiser needs, not just a reaction to shifts in consumption trends”
Regional and national pictures
Daniel Knapp, Director of Advertising Research at IHS Technology and author of the research, said, "Our study shows that even the most mature online advertising markets in Europe sustain double digit growth, clearly indicating the economic vibrancy of the sector. This growth is primarily enabled by the proliferation of intelligent data infrastructures. Data is the growth engine behind advertising that serves as a connective tissue between consumers, media and brands.”
The CEE region grew strongly as online advertising is still benefitting from the improvements in broadband infrastructure and the increase in broadband penetration in these markets, which brings more addressable audiences online. However, growth in European online advertising continues to be driven by the most mature online advertising markets in Europe. This is a direct result of investment in formats and targeting capabilities and developing data strategies in a cross-device environment.
As Europe exits the double-dip recession, advertising markets will benefit from increased optimism from brands. Provided that publishers continue to improve their offerings, online advertising spend is well-placed to be the main beneficiary of the larger advertising budgets. Mobile and video will be the primary areas of interest for these brands.
Top 3 Individual growth markets were:
Slovenia 43.1% growth
Ireland 33.3%.growth
Belarus 32.8%growth
Top 10 Rankings
UK - €8.9bn
Germany – €5.4bn
France - €3.7bn
Italy – €1.9bn
Russia- €1.8bn
Netherlands - €1.5bn
Sweden - €1.0bn
Spain – €0.9bn
Denmark - €0.7bn
Norway - €0.7bn"

Source:  Press release from IAB Europe, 21st May 2015

Full presentation here

The top 3 Messenger Apps in 5 markets

Source:  OnDevice Research, 18th March 2015

The number of parcels sent as a proportion of all mail

Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, 11th December 2014

Multi-Screening is now mainstream in Europe

"During peaktime viewing in the UK, 74 per cent claim to have picked up an internet connected device during TV ad breaks, with very little difference between age groups, social demographics or gender (Craft/Thinkbox ‘Screen Life: TV advertising everywhere’, 2014)
Most TV shows attract some social media commentary, but the shows which attract the most tend to be live sports and reality TV shows – the 2014 BRIT Awards in the UK saw a vast volume of Twitter conversation with 4.2 million Tweets about the show.
42 per cent of French viewers aged 15-60 say that they have engaged with a TV programme via a social network (OmnicomMediaGroup/ Mesagraph – Social Télévision)
37 per cent of Swiss say that it’s “normal” and “commonplace” to use the internet while watching TV (Publisuisse, ‘Media du Future 2017’)
In Spain, 62 per cent of people claimed in 2013 to use a second screen while watching TV – an increase of 11 percentage points compared to the previous year (Televidente 2.0, 2013)
In Sweden, 55 per cent viewers have used another screen (smartphone, tablet or computer) while watching TV (MMS Moving Images 2014:1)
33 per cent of people in Poland have multi-screened and almost half of multi-screening activity (49 per cent) is in order to look at content that is related to what is being watched (Millward Brown ‘AdReaction 2014’)."

Source:  Advanced Television, 21st November 2014

(Lots more stats in the full article)

More than 40% of broadband homes in Germany and Spain have a Smart TV device

Source:  Data from Parks Associates, reported in a press release, 30th September 2014
Note - it seems that ChromeCast and other similar devices are included in the definition of 'Smart TV'

Desktop accounts for 70% of paid search spend

"Desk­tops now rep­re­sent 70% of paid search (com­pared to 77% in August 2013) while mobile/smartphones account for 30%. Cur­rent trends indi­cate that the share for desk­tops will con­tinue to decline and hit 60% of paid search by the end of 2014 due to the organic increase of smart­phone adop­tion. The uptick in smart­phone adop­tion and usage can be attrib­uted to bet­ter WiFi avail­abil­ity, greater mobile data band­width, and improved mobile land­ing pages, site and app expe­ri­ences con­ducive to bet­ter facil­i­tate mobile shop­ping. For the UK, mobile adop­tion has out­paced the U.S. (64%) with desk­tops only account­ing for 56% of all paid search spend. Tablets account for a quar­ter of all search spend and mobile rose to almost 20% (from just 11% ten months earlier)."
Source:  Data from Adobe, reported on it's blog, 16th July 2014
Methodology
"Based on adver­tiser data across key ver­ti­cals in the U.S., U.K. and Ger­many, we looked at the var­i­ous ad for­mats from Google includ­ing Prod­uct List­ing Ads (PLAs) – which are becom­ing part of Google Shop­ping – to see how they’re per­form­ing for adver­tis­ers. The analy­sis is based on the most com­pre­hen­sive set of indus­try data includ­ing $2+ bil­lion of annual man­aged search spend of 500+ Adobe Media Opti­mizer cus­tomers and 200+ bil­lion search impressions."
Note - lots more data in the blog post

Smartphone operating system shares by market

Source:  Press release from Kantar Worldpanel, for 3 months ending May 2014

Online ad spend grew to €27.3 billion in Europe in 2013

"At the 8th edition of its annual Interact conference IAB Europe today announced that online advertising grew 11.9% to a market value of €27.3bn in 2013.
The AdEx Benchmark research - the definitive guide to the state of the European online advertising market - revealed that online advertising enjoyed another year of sustained growth across Europe. Most markets have shown a significant and now more uniform level of growth than in previous years. Whilst developing markets continue to grow their share of total media spend, the more mature markets have benefited from innovation in online advertising technology and advances in monetizing mobile, enabling them to also further extend their growth curve. Changing consumer patterns have made mobile monetization more urgent and Western European markets in particular are responding to this challenge generating the majority of their growth from mobile. A robust macroeconomic framework has increased advertiser confidence and stimulated budget shifts to online.
Mobile has taken double-digit display market share for the first time, accounting for 11.5% with a growth rate of 128.5% compared with 2012.
Online video advertising also showed strong growth, increasing by 45.4% in 2013, to nearly €1.19bn. This is the first time in Europe that online video has crossed the €1billion mark.
Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe, noted the importance of the digital ecosystem to European growth. “These results confirm the increasing value contributed by digital advertising to Europe’s economy. Technology innovation is driving growth and it’s important that we continue to foster our European digital businesses to enable a strong European presence on the world stage.”
Mobile, video and big data continue to provide rich new ways to engage consumers and at Interact today we will explore the success stories and illustrate the power of digital services in enabling business growth.
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study splits the online ad market into 3 broad segments: Display, Search and Classifieds and Directories. Growth in these online advertising formats has been underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns.
In 2013, the Display Ad market experienced the highest growth across the categories at 14.9%, with a total value of €9.2bn.
Search showed growth of 13.0% - and a market value of €13.4 billion. Strong growth was recorded in many markets across Europe with Russia again being the out-perfomer at 34.4% search growth. Factors for growth included investment in search across different devices, boosting the mobile search figures, as consumers continue to increase their time spent online on the go and the continued investment from small to medium sized business in the medium.
The 2013 Classifieds and Directories market was relatively stable at €4.6bn showing growth of 3.6%. Central and Eastern European markets continued to benefit from the migration of spend from print classifieds to online and the switch to classifieds normally noted in more difficult economic circumstances. Scandinavian markets maintained their strong position in this category €256m in Sweden and €252m in Norway although with their level of maturity in the category comes a lesser level of growth. Market consolidation has brought scale and efficiency to this formerly fragmented sector.
Daniel Knapp, Director of Advertising Research at IHS Technology and author of the research, said, “The underlying dynamics of growth in online advertising have changed in 2013. Mobile, and cross-device consumption has so far been a challenge facing marketers, with underdeveloped ecosystems and fragmented measurement approaches hampering investment. Yet our study shows that mobile has now become a significant part of online ad spend. Advancements in advertising targeting technology, standardisation of formats and improvements in measurement have allowed important progress in bridging the consumption/ad spend divide in mobile. It is now imperative that market participants further evolve their data strategies and connect advertising experiences across different devices from mobile to desktop for sustainable market growth.”
The top 10 list of markets are as follows. Top Individual market growth was registered by Russia 26.8% and Turkey with 24.3%.
Top 10 Rankings
1. UK - €7.4bn
2. Germany – €4.7bn
3. France - €3.5bn
4. Russia – €1.8bn
5. Italy- €1.7bn
6. Netherlands - €1.3bn
7. Sweden - €0.9bn
8. Spain – €0.9bn
9. Norway - €0.7bn
10. Denmark - €0.6bn"
Source:  Press release from IAB Europe, 20th May 2014

European online retail spend by market in 2013

Click to enarge

Source:  RetailResearch.org, (Centre for Retail Research) retrieved 8th April 2014

European online retail as a percent of total retail by market

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Source:  RetailResearch.org, (Centre for Retail Research) retrieved 8th April 2014

Daily and Monthly active Facebook users in several European markets

"Germany – 19 million daily active users, 25 million monthly active users (43% of German Internet users are on Facebook, 76% of monthly users return daily), 13 million mobile DAU, 18 million mobile MAU (27% of German mobile phone users)
France – 18 million DAU, 26 million MAU (63% of French Internet users are on Facebook, 69% of monthly users return daily), 11 million mobile DAU, 17 million mobile MAU (33% of French mobile phone users)
Spain – 12 million DAU, 18 million MAU (58% of Spanish Internet users are on Facebook,  67% of monthly users return daily), 8.1 million mobile DAU, 13 million mobile MAU (32% of Spanish mobile phone users)
Italy – 17 million DAU, 23 million MAU (71% of Italian Internet users are on Facebook, 74% of monthly users return daily, ), 10 million mobile DAU, 16 million mobile MAU (32% of Italian mobile phone users)
Sweden – 3.8 million DAU, 4.9 million MAU (57% of Swedish Internet users are on Facebook, 78% of monthly users return daily) , 3 million mobile DAU, 4 million mobile MAU (53% of Swedish mobile phone users)
Turkey – 19 million DAU, 33 million MAU, 9.5 million mobile DAU, 20 million mobile MAU
Israel – 2.7 million DAU, 3.8 million MAU (71% of monthly users return daily), 2 million mobile DAU, 2.9 million mobile MAU"

Source:  Data from Facebook, compiled by TachCrunch, 29th December 2013

Viewing of TV content online in 2013

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Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2013

Frequency of online shopping in 2013

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Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2013