Here’s Why Digital Advertising is So Expensive in 2022

If you are an individual that’s working in the field of digital marketing, chances are that you have already noticed how expensive these ads have become in the new year. Many brands and marketing agencies are being forced to drastically increase their digital marketing budgets, but it should be noted that these cost increases vary somewhat based on the platform that you might be looking at for the most part, with Meta being the worst culprit in this regard.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Apple has a pretty large role to play in all of this. The recent changes that Apple made to iOS made it so that ad targeting became more difficult than ever before, and Meta in particular was hit quite hard because of that. Meta advertisers need to start using first party information to target ads which is a lot more expensive, so it makes sense that ad rates are going up on this platform.

However, it should also be noted that the price of ads on platforms like Amazon and Google are not going up quite the same amount as with Meta. Amazon has managed to keep its ad targeting more or less consistent despite changes that Apple made, and Google has been less severely impacted than Meta as well although this has not prevented ad prices from increasing on its various platforms.

One reason for why Google ads are becoming more expensive, at least on YouTube, is that there is a higher demand for them. Connected TV has been the name of the game for quite some time now, and this means that more and more advertisers are starting to look into YouTube. Since ad space on any given platform is inevitably going to end up being limited, it stands to reason that YouTube will start charging more for ad space which might be why some digital marketers have been frustrated in their attempts to make the most of their opportunities in that regard.

Another platform that has recently seen pretty drastic changes in ad prices is TikTok, but this has more to do with how new TikTok is rather than anything else. Advertisers are still discovering the platform, and the same demand and supply interaction that made YouTube ads more expensive will be coming into play here as well. As more and more advertisers start to utilize TikTok as their marketing platform of choice, chances are that ad prices will continue to increase as well although there have been some instances of TikTok’s ad prices going down too on occasion.

While Meta’s 61% CPM increase might seem like a lot, it’s less than the 75% increase that Google implemented over the past year or so. What that basically means is that Apple is not as responsible for this apocalyptic advertising scenario as some would like to believe. Digital marketing is also just becoming the norm, and as more money starts to be directed towards it marketers and advertisers will be vying for some of the most valuable digital ad space that is currently out there. People in this industry should expect ads to get even more expensive from here on out.


H/T: BusinessInsider / Illustration: Freepik.

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