ONLINE ADVERTISING LEADING OLDER MEDIA

ONLINE advertising will account for more than half of all US ad sales this year, according to a study, surpassing $100 billion (R1.47 trillion) for the first time and marking a milestone in the shift of money, time and attention to the internet from older media. Having already exceeded the combined ad sales of print, radio and TV, online advertising in the US will increase 16 percent to $106.6bn, researcher Magna Global said in a report yesterday. Led by Google and Facebook, the growth will boost the overall US advertising market to a record $207bn this year. Alphabet, parent of Google, and YouTube and Facebook account for most online ad sales and show little sign of slowing down. Ad revenue from web searches, dominated by Google, grew by 18 percent in the second quarter, Magna said. Ad sales on social networks, led by Facebook, jumped 36 percent. Amazon. com has also emerged as a big recipient of ad dollars, with projected revenue of $4.61bn, according to EMarketer. Some of this digital growth is coming at the expense of TV, once the dominant medium for advertisers. National TV ads will rise 0.8 percent this year, Magna said, but only thanks to events that don’t occur every year, such as the Olympics and US mid-term elections. Excluding political ads, local TV sales will be down more than 4 percent. The audience for major TV networks has been declining as more viewers waited for streaming options like Netflix and Hulu. | Bloomberg