Digiday+ Research: Agencies see different paths for online, offline ad spend this year

That’s according to a Digiday+ Research survey of 79 agency professionals.

To be exact, nearly two-thirds of agency pros (64%) told Digiday that they agree that online ad spending will grow in 2023. But this is in stark contrast to offline ad spending: Slightly more than a quarter of agency pros (27%) said they agree that offline ad spending will grow this year. Meanwhile, nearly half (49%) said they disagree that offline ad spend will grow in 2023. Only 20% of respondents to Digiday’s survey said they disagree that online ad spend will grow this year.

Cutting into the data further reveals that agencies’ confidence in online ad spend isn’t quite as sturdy as it seems straight off, though.

Specifically, the percentage of agency pros who told Digiday they strongly agree that online ad spend will grow this year saw a big drop-off compared with last year. In 2022, more than a third of respondents (38%) said they strongly agreed that online ad spend would grow. That percentage fell to 17% this year.

Meanwhile, the percentage of agency pros who said they disagree somewhat that online ad spend will grow saw a significant increase: from 2% last year to 17% this year.

Looking more closely at agencies’ expectations for offline ad spend this year, the biggest shift from last year occurred in the “somewhat” categories — somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. Last year, more than a third of respondents to Digiday’s survey (36%) said they somewhat agreed that offline ad spending would grow in 2022. This year, that percentage fell to fewer than a quarter (22%).

Meanwhile, a similar shift happened among those agency pros who somewhat disagree offline ad spending will grow this year — but the inverse from the somewhat agree category. Slightly more than a quarter of respondent’s to last year’s survey (27%) said they somewhat disagreed that offline ad spending would grow in 2022. This year, that percentage jumped to over a third (39%).

It is also worth noting that just 2% of agency pros said last year that they strongly disagreed offline ad spending would grow in the coming year. That percentage is up to 10% among agencies this year.