U.S. marketers will spend $11.5 billion this year on data and related solutions, an increase of a half-billion dollars over last year that will be fueled by more investment in display ads and email. Spending in those two channels combined will nearly triple, Winterberry Group’s Bruce Biegel told attendees of a LiveRamp Summit in Santa Clara yesterday.
Specifically, data-related spending will rise by 35% in email marketing and 21% in display, according to the Winterberry study, which is built off a five-year-old model of the marketplace and updated with input from marketing industry executives.
It’s direct mail, however, that still commands the lion’s share of spending on data-driven targeting. More than $9 billion of the 2015 total will go into perfecting mailing lists. While ascendant, display and email each will account for just over $1 billion in spending.
“Our analysis points to data’s increasing central role in all audience engagement efforts,” said Biegel, who is Winterberry’s senior managing director. “We believe the time has come to update old models and to help our industry peers understand the real distribution of dollars across the three pillars of the data-driven marketing economy—third-party information, data management services, and platform technology.”
Direct mail merits the bulk of data dollars because it continues to command a heaping share of overall marketing dollars. Among all media categories in 2015, Winterberry predicts direct mail spending will be $45.2 billion, second only to television at $68.5 billion.
