Study Shows Influencer Marketing/Paid Content Currently Has The Biggest Share In Digital Advertising Budgets

With Instagram came the rise of influencers and paid branded content. As there has never been any stop to their success, these native advertising formats now enjoy the biggest share among digital advertising budgets while surpassing options like paid search, display, social, and video ads which were previously the absolute favorites of brands.

This verdict has been presented in a report by Advertiser Perceptions and as per the figures shown, the branded content and influencer marketing together stand up for 20% of the digital advertising budgets.

Paid search is the next most heavy budgeted option with 14% of digital ad budgets being allotted to it. The list then goes as follows

• Display (13%)
• Paid social (12%)
• Video (12%)
• CTV/OTT (8%)
• E-commerce (7%)
• Mobile in-app ads (6%)
• Audio/podcasts (6%)
• Other Digital Options (3%)

This study was conducted during the times of pandemic so it also includes the impact of COVID-19 on digital advertising decisions. Researchers interviewed 205 advertising executives (46% marketer / 54% agency), and the results made it pretty obvious that companies now prefer investing in the native options as an effective response to the crises and also to reach out to the targeted customers on a personal level.

Moreover, the Advertiser Perceptions Executive Vice President-Business Intelligence Sarah Bolton also said that as a lot of advertisers are returning from strict lockdowns, there will be supply system problems and therefore prioritizing upper-funnel activity would be the way forward. It is about time to increase more awareness and humanize brands which influencer marketing does the best.

Bolton also stated that paid content and influencer marketing offers more flexibility in influencing customers as compared to the conventional digital advertising formats.

When it came to which digital advertising options turning out to be "more important" in 2021, paid influencers and video had a tie at 41%.

H/T: MediaPost.

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