Survey: Marketers Say Ad Budgets Will Keep Shifting From TV To Digital Video

IAB Survey Shows Digital Video Budgets Growing, TV Allocations Shrinking

In the next three to five years, original content developed for online consumption will be as important to advertisers as TV is now, according to a new survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The industry group surveyed 297 brand marketers and advertising agency executives ahead of the Digital New Fronts in New York — the two-week pitch party by digital media companies to lure brand dollars to the burgeoning medium.

The majority of respondents said they expect the budget shift to digital video to come from TV. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) said they plan to spend more on digital video advertising this year than 2013 and say that budgets will come from television. Half, however, also added that they expect overall budgets to grow to include digital video.

As more content producers are focusing on developing original online series, advertisers say budgets allocations will increase marginally from 47 percent in 2013 to 48 percent in 2014, at the expense of other video content. However, agencies allocated just 45 percent of video ad budgets to original programming in 2013 and expect that to rise to 46 percent, while marketers’ allocations have been split evenly between original and other video content.

Marketers still view measurement as the industry’s biggest weakness. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said they’re still looking for research that shows digital video advertising works as well or better than TV ads. While 74 percent said they’d be more likely to increase budgets for digital if there were metrics that are consistent with TV.

Ad tech can also a roadblock for video getting bigger budgets. Over 80 percent indicated that solutions that enables TV and digital buys in one buy are important.

Over three-quarters of respondents spend directly with sites and nearly as many (71 percent) buy via ad networks.

Cross platform buys are expected to increase, particularly among agencies, 60 percent of whom increased spending on cross platform buys in 2013.

Respondents are decision makers in either digital video or TV advertising with annual budgets of at least $1 million.

Over the next two weeks at the IAB’s Digital NewFronts, 22 online content producers, including Microsoft, Yahoo, The New York Times, AOL, Buzzfeed and Google’s YouTube will be bringing out all the stops to woo these marketers in the hopes of landing bigger ad deals.