IAB Europe, the leading European association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, announced last Tuesday May 25th through the AdEx Benchmark study that despite the pandemic situation the European digital advertising market has grown by 6.3% to reach 69.9 billion euros.
The AdEx Benchmark study helps us to understand the development of the last years in the digital advertising sector and covers the 28 markets.
In 2021, a total of 7 countries have experienced year-on-year growth above the European average, among them Turkey as the most dynamic market with a growth of, Ukraine and the UK.
It should also be noted that Spain is in fifth position in terms of growth in 2021. Another interesting fact to note is that there is no country whose advertising investment is lower than last year.
For example, in the case of Spain we can see how in 2021 it has recovered at a very significant pace from the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. In the case of Germany, its economy withstood the effects of the pandemic well, even having a significant growth during the pandemic.
The Display format remains for the fourth consecutive year the format with the highest investment in digital advertising.
As expected, display is becoming the format with the highest investment. In this regard, it is important to note that this format includes social and display in multiple formats.
Below we can see the share of digital advertising investment by format for the year 2021:
As we can see, the display is almost equally divided between the more traditional display format and social. On the other hand, another interesting fact is that classifieds and affiliate has had a drop from 10.7% to 7.5%. In the case of search there has also been a slight drop from 43.6% in 2020 to 42.9% this past 2021. Finally, it should be added that the fastest growing format within display is the video format through social networks.