U.S. Digital Ad Spend Will Surpass Offline in 2019

eMarketer published figures today showing that total U.S. ad spend will hit $238.82 billion, with the amount spent on digital media buys surpassing that of traditional and accounting for 54.2 percent of the market. The research shows that digital ad spend will hit $129.34 billion in 2019, while traditional media buys will generate $109.48 billion, with total online media buys generating $172.29 billion in revenue by 2021.

Another notable trend documented by eMarketer: the Facebook-Google duopoly’s dominance of the U.S. online ad market is slipping for the first time, even as their revenue continues to grow, as Amazon continues to close in on their hegemony.

For instance, Google’s share of online U.S. ad spend will drop to 37.2 percent in 2019 from 38.2 percent 12 months earlier. Meanwhile, Facebook’s share of the market will increase slightly to 22.1 percent in 2019. eMarketer analysts noted the majority of that growth will be driven by Instagram–a byproduct of the privacy challenges it faced over 2018.

The most notable challenge to Facebook and Google’s share of the U.S. online ad market—their combined share of the market was 60 percent in 2018—is the continued rise of Amazon whose ad business will grow by more than 50 percent in 2019 when its share of the market will hit 8.8 percent.

“Amazon has a major benefit to advertisers, especially consumer-packaged goods and direct-to-consumer brands,” said eMarketer forecasting director Monica Peart. “The platform is rich with shoppers’ behavioral data for targeting and provides access to purchase data in real time. This type of access was once only available through the retail partner to share at their discretion. But with Amazon’s suite of sponsored ads, marketers have unprecedented access to the ‘shelves’ where consumers are shopping.”