U.S. Marketing Growth Pegged at 11.8%

BY Kathy Crosett
Featured image for “U.S. Marketing Growth Pegged at 11.8%”

After a stellar recovery in 2021, with a growth rate of 21.5%, U.S. marketing expenditure increases will likely ease a bit and end 2022 at 11.8% higher. In 2021, offline marketing spend recovered somewhat from its deep 2020 plunge and settled at $196 billion. Online marketing expenditures jumped to $240.4 billion. Here’s a look at the U.S. ad market as projected by Winterberry Group analysts.

U.S. Marketing Growth in 2021

Here’s how offline marketing spending broke out by specific categories last year:

  • Linear TV $60.1 (billion)
  • Experiential/​Sponsorship $36.1
  • Direct mail $41.9
  • Shopper marketing $21.6
  • Radio $11.9
  • Traditional outdoor $7.1
  • Magazine $7.5
  • Newspaper $7.0

For digital marketing, Wintergreen analysts listed the spending by format as follows:

  • Search $84.7 (billion)
  • Paid social $58.6
  • Digital video $41.0
  • CTV/​Streaming $14.4
  • Display $14.1
  • Email/​SMS $5.7
  • Digital Audio $5.7
  • Video game advertising $5.0
  • Influencer $4.6
  • Digital out-​of-​home $3.1
  • Affiliate network fees $3.4

A deeper dive into these figures reveals that the influencer, digital video and search categories experienced a 40% increase when compared to the previous year's spending. However, the true growth story in digital for 2021 was CTV/​Streaming, with a 60% boost over the previous year. Paid social (+33.3%) and video game advertising (+22.9%) also experienced healthy increases in demand. 

Looking ahead, analysts project that video game advertising will jump to $5.8 billion this year. While this market remains largely one of buying in-​game ads, “NFTS, AR/​VR and immersive experiences will be the next big thing,” once the hardware can deliver on the demands of metaverse world building.

B2B Market Projections

While B2B marketing has long been dominated by trade publications, the shift to digital formats is speeding up. B2B buyers are going online to research products, services, companies, and sales professionals. Market leaders are developing more online content. Sellers will likely spend about $30 billion on performance marketing in 2022.

Drivers Behind the $487.8 Billion in 2022 Marketing Spend

Your clients are operating in a challenging business environment. If the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine continues to escalate, supply chain issues could intensify. We don’t yet know if the next variant of COVID-​19 will result in a fresh set of restrictions or if we’ll enter into an endemic treatment of the virus. Financial pressures due to higher interest rates and slower growth will also impact bottom lines. As your clients prepare to launch new products or expand market share, they'll need to adjust for these factors.

Offline

Despite these challenges, Wintergreen analysts expect offline media to grow by 5.9%, to $207.6 billion, this year. Linear TV will see a 3.5% increase, thanks to political ad buying. Radio operators can expect a similar growth rate, 3.9%, which will bring revenue in that format to $12.4 billion. Direct mail sellers should end 2022 with $43.4 billion in revenue, 3.5% higher than they were at the end of 2021. The brightest sector in the offline media world may be addressable TV. With only $3.6 billion in projected spending this year, marketers will be spending over 27% more than they did in 2021. However, traditional newspaper ads may drop another 9%, to $6.3 billion, while magazine ads will amount to $6.1 billion, recording a 17% decline.

Online

Paying social media influencers to promote products and services will continue to be a hot trend with advertising pouring 51% more into this area than they did last year and spending a total $7 billion. Look for CTV/​Streaming (+32.3%) and digital video (+23%) to take off, amounting to $19.1 billion and $50.4 billion, respectively. Formerly high growth sectors like paid social (+15%) and search (+12%) will see respectable increases in demand and generate $67.4 billion and $95.2 billion.

U.S. marketing growth is set to soar in 2022. Your clients can benefit from positive economic developments by targeting the right consumers at the right time with the right messaging. To help them succeed, check out AdMall from SalesFuel for local market information, audience intelligence and more.

Photo by Mikael Blomkvist from Pexels


Share: