50% of Advertising Will Be Digital, Says Google Exec

It’s a bold claim, but if we look at the how and why it makes a lot of sense.  Nikesh Arora, Google’s president of global sales says that he expects up to 50% of all advertising, within the next 5-8 years, will be digital. 

The paradigm shift toward purchasing online is the driving factor.  As the world continues to recover from a near disastrous 2008, people are spending more online than ever.  Though any business should see growth from year to year, the shift is exponential instead of simply a small percentile growth.

Arora states “People are shifting their spending dollars more and more to the online world – whether it be direct marketing, or advertising, or branding. And that follows industrial marketing logic which is that you have to go where the eyeballs are, where the customers are…I personally expect in the next five to eight years 30pc to 50pc of advertising will be digital”.

Google’s moves, most recently, have seemed to lie in the mobile realm.  With the impending AdMob purchase, there’s no doubt that a major focus of upcoming digital advertising will be in the mobile market.

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Arora’s comments nearly solidify this thought: “Over the past five years we have tripled the number of broadband customers, more than doubled the number of internet connections and more than doubled mobile connections”.

One of the more interesting quotes, in our opinion, is Arora’s take on what advertisers are doing.  “There is a big gap between what businesses need to do and what they are doing so far.”  He goes on to reference crowdsourcing and brand recognition, as well as brand discussion via online portals such as Facebook.

What does the future hold?  Time will tell.  But when a company that makes 95% of its revenue off of advertising speaks, the world does well to pay attention.