Digiday+ Research: Half of marketers say ad spend will grow this year

This is, according to a research survey Digiday+ nearly 50 traders carried out in the 4th quarter of 2024.

Digiday’s survey found that traders had high expectations for advertising this year – only half of the merchants (48%) reported in the fourth quarter that they agree with advertisers in 2025. The latest quarter (24%) stated that they disagree, disagree, disagree, and 29% said they were not sure.

However, it shows that traders are not very confident in their predictions that advertising expenses will increase this year. Forty -one percent of traders with Digiday traders said they only agree that advertisers spend more in 2025, while only 7% said they agreed strongly.

The formula is similar at the other end of the scale. Nineteen percent of traders said that they only disagree somewhat that advertising expenses will increase this year, while only 5% said they strongly disagree.

While the data show undeniable optimism among traders in terms of advertising expenses this year, it also shows a significant amount of uncertainty about how things are shaking in the advertising industry.

Optimism of traders around advertising expenses comes to the heels of the year, when almost half of the agencies noted that their advertising expenses increase. Forty -two percent of traders said traders that Digiday’s survey increased during 2024. Less than a third (31%) said the expenses were reduced in 2024. (However, it is worth noting that 40% of traders said that their expenses on advertising on behalf of clients increased only somewhat in 2024, while only 2% said it increased significantly.)

And this optimism is stronger when looking at the data for this year. Digiday’s survey found that nearly two -thirds of traders (63%) said they expected to increase the expenses of advertising by their company on behalf of clients in 2025. Twenty percent said the expenses would change this year, and only 16% said it would want a decline.

Not only that the percentage of traders who have stated that advertising on behalf of clients will reduce the smallest group this year in the digiday survey, but the full 16% said the expenses would be reduced somewhat. Neither opponent of the survey stated that their advertising expenses on behalf of clients will decrease significantly this year.

Again, however, we have to point out that those traders who have stated that their advertising will spend on behalf of clients will increase only a bit above those who have stated that the expenses will significantly increase. More than half of the respondents to survey Digiday (55%) said that spending advertising by their companies on behalf of clients will increase this year, while only 8% said it would increase significantly.

This probably does not come as a surprise at the age of digital everything, but Digiday’s survey also found that the vast majority of increased advertising expenditures that traders expect to become online this year, unlike off. Only shortly than three quarters of traders (74%) said they agreed to grow online advertising in 2025.

Obviously, the winner is online advertising expenses – but it is important to context these data by comparing them with last year’s expectations. In the fourth quarter of 2023, 82% of the Marketter respondents who affected the digiday survey agreed that they would grow online advertising in 2024, which means 74% who said the same in the fourth quarter of 2024 in fact a decline. Meanwhile, 21% of traders in the fourth quarter of 2023 said they agreed that offline advertising expenditure would grow in 2024. In the fourth quarter of 2024, this percentage was 39% – a significant jump.

It is difficult to define this as a trend based on just two years of data. By next year, however, it will be worthwhile whether the mismatch between online advertising and offline expenses will continue in this direction.

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