After a 2023 marked by conservative investments and under-average development, U.S. digital advertising market saw a comeback of its usual double-digit growth in 2024. Consumer sentiment was on the up and marketers were more optimistic about the state of U.S. economy, turning ad spending on digital channels back up.
Overview of the U.S. market: digital first
The United States is the largest digital advertising market in the world, boasting a revenue of 317 billion dollars in 2024. About 7.5 out of 10 dollars invested in ads in the country were devoted to digital advertising. Internet advertising spending in the U.S. was projected to grow in the upcoming years, with sources expecting it to reach 490 billion dollars by 2029. Retail was the industry that invested the most in digital advertising accounting for 15 percent of digital ad spending, while entertainment and financial services followed with 12 and 11 percent, respectively.
Digital ad formats: top players boost the top format
Search advertising is the most profitable and most promising digital ad format in the U.S., accounting for roughly half of all digital advertising revenue generated in the country. This is directly related to the fact that Google, the leading search engine in the world, had by far the highest net digital ad revenue among digital publishers in the U.S., holding 25 percent of the pie. Heavy hitters Facebook and Amazon followed, with the latter’s share of national digital ad revenue being projected to gradually increase over the following years.
Mobile advertising: the blue-eyed boy of U.S. advertisers
Smartphones became the chosen devices for digital advertisers in the United States in 2018, when mobile advertising spending outperformed desktop for the first time. Since then, the focus of advertisers on mobile has only increased. In 2024, mobile advertising accounted for 65 percent of total digital ad spend in the United States. The two most invested-in mobile ad formats were search and video, with the former attracting an ad spend of nearly 82 billion dollars and the latter accruing a spend of roughly 59 billion. Advertisers have numerous reasons to prefer mobile devices to regular PCs, one of them being lower penetration rate of ad blockers on smartphones and tablets.
Consumer attitudes: digital ads are a necessary evil
Seven out of 10 American said they were okay sharing data to support advertising because data was essential to a free internet (1612721). However, four out of 10 said they were often annoyed by advertising on the internet. The attitude towards ads appeared most lenient among U.S. podcast listeners, with roughly six out of 10 saying they would not mind a couple of minutes of extra ads per show if it allowed the show to continue. In general, consumers felt they were the most receptive to ads when on shopping, news, or social media websites.
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