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The news: A survey of 70 professionals at independent advertising agencies conducted by Digiday+ shows that despite increased spending on digital ad channels, many advertisers are not confident that digital ad channels are driving results.
Digiday+ asked respondents to rank digital channels on a five-point scale, ranging from “not at all confident” to “extremely confident.”
More on this:Facebook and Google dominate digital channels in ad spend, but changes to privacy rules and measurement methods have affected advertisers’ faith in their impact.
Respondents expressed more confidence in Google than other platforms: Two-thirds of respondents said it makes up “at least a large portion” of their ad spend, and 68% of that portion said they feeleither confident or extremely confident in its results. Even YouTube lagged far behind—only 43% of the 18% who said it makes up a large portion of their spending felt confident in results.
Instagram and Facebook came in a distant second both in ad spend and confidence—55% and 56% of respondents said the two platforms make up a large portion of their ad spend, respectively. Confidence among those respondents clocked in at 57% and 53%, respectively.
Shaken confidence: None of the eight channels mentioned in the survey scored a confidence rating higher than 43%.
Few advertisers said they had “extremely low” confidence in the different channels—instead, results indicate that advertisers aren’t yet fully convinced of their impact.
Among respondents who said they were “confident” in a given channel, Amazon scored the highest at 43%,despite nearly half of respondents saying they didn’t spend on it.
Google and TV came in second at 37%, followed by Instagram at 36%, Facebook and YouTube at 35%, TikTok at 26%, and display ads at 22%.
Why it’s worth watching: 2020 forced agencies to pivot away from traditional advertising channels like TV and out-of-home advertising, but platforms still have a ways to go to make advertisers comfortable.
The pivot to digital channels has coincided with dramatic changes in the way digital ad tracking works. Legacy trackers like third-party browser cookies and Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) are being phased out or have changed entirely.
Facebook and other platforms have struggled to find new models that satisfy old needs. The road bumps they’ve hit along the way have raised questions: Earlier this month, for instance, Facebook revealed that an undetected bug had affected advertiser data as far back as February.