In the next 5 years industry experts predict online marketing will comprise 35% of total marketing spend compared to 21% in 2012. Online display marketing, more practically known as banner ads and the like, is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 20% over the next 5 years, surpassed only by growth rates in social and mobile. By 2016 experts expect display marketing to represent 36% of total digital marketing spend and nearly 13% of total marketing spend, offline and online. While search engine marketing, including SEO and paid search, will still have the lion’s share of total digital spend at 44%, online display marketing spend won’t be far behind at 36%. This all makes sense as more consumers’ “eyeballs” go online to consume content, including that of traditional TV. In summary, branding activity will continue to move online and much of it will be in the form of display marketing.

In another study done by WordStream.com (you can see their Infograph here), some guidance is provided to marketers about where to invest their display marketing budgets. This particular study compared display marketing opportunities on the two biggest online properties, Google and Facebook.

Following are some interesting findings about these two massive digital properties:

• Facebook is now up to over 850 million members and experts estimate Facebook has a 51% reach. That is, 51% of internet users get exposed to Facebook on a regular basis. It experiences nearly 1 trillion page-views per month. These same industry experts estimate Google’s reach, from all their properties including YouTube, to be at 90%. Consumers using Google will experience 180 billion ad impressions per month.
• The average click-through rate (CTR) nationally among all online properties and all types of display marketing is about 00.1%. That’s 1 out of 1,000 for you non-math majors. This means for every 1,000 consumers that see an online display ad, only 1 will click on it. Facebook CTR is 00.05%, half the national average. Additionally, the Facebook CTR drops to 00.02% after 3 days. Google’s CTR is 00.4%, 4 times the national rate.
• It is estimated that display marketing cost-per-click (CPC) on Facebook is about $0.80 compared to $0.75 on Google.

Below is an excerpt from the WordStream.com Infograph:

As marketers continue to evaluate online and offline trends, where they get the biggest branding impact and how to integrate display marketing strategies, they should experiment and test different platforms to determine what works best for them. In any case, marketers need to get experience at and develop their skills around the fast growing area of online display marketing.