Digital advertising set to rise to over $75 billion by 2017

Digital video ad spending growth is coming from mobile, including tablets. Mobile video will account for just 12.6% of all digital video ad spending this year, or $520 million. But it’s growing much faster than desktop-based digital video ad spending, at a pace of 112.4% vs. 35% for online video this year. eMarketer expects growth for both types of digital video to moderate in coming years, but predicts the mobile portion of the pie will continue to increase at a faster rate. By 2017, 29.7% of all digital video ad spending will go toward mobile ads (including ads served to tablet devices).

eMarketer forms its estimates of ad spending based on the analysis of various elements related to the ad spending market, including macro-level economic conditions; historical trends of the advertising market; historical trends of each medium in relation to other media; reported revenues from major ad publishers; estimates from other research firms; consumer media consumption trends; and eMarketer interviews with executives at ad agencies, brands, media publishers and other industry leaders.

Digital advertising can’t stop the rise of US TV ad spending, though the pace of growth of TV ad dollars is much slower. Still, eMarketer predicts US advertisers will spend $66.35 billion on TV this year, up from $64.54 billion in 2012 and set to rise to over $75 billion by 2017.

That’s a compound annual growth rate of 3.7% between 2011 and 2017—far short of the growth of digital advertising spending, but enough to keep total television ad dollars far above the amount going to the entire digital ecosystem, including all ad formats served to PCs and mobile devices.

Digital video ad spending is growing particularly fast. eMarketer estimates spending on video ads served to PCs and mobile devices will reach $4.14 billion this year, more than twice 2011 levels. By 2017, spending will more than double again, to $9.06 billion.