According to study just released by eMarketer, digital ad spend in France has grown 7% in 2014 to surpass $3 billion, accounting for 20.2% of total media ad spend. While there continues to be a misalignment in terms of consumers offline vs online time and where advertisers allocate their spend, eMarketer’s findings illustrate that a change is underway.
What they’ve found is that the biggest driver of the shift is mobile ad spending which is expected to leap from 14.7% of total digital ad spend in 2014 to 22.2% next year and over half by 2018. In terms of total media ad spend, mobile only currently accounts for 3%, but this will increase to 12% by 2018. According to Karin von Abrams, senior analyst at eMarketer:
“Rocketing smartphone usage continues to fuel mobile ad spending in France. eMarketer calculates that 26.7 million people in the country owned at least one smartphone in 2014, and that number is set to reach nearly 33 million in 2015—equivalent to 64.0% of all mobile phone users. In addition, more than one-third of the entire population already uses a tablet at least once a month. With so much activity taking place on mobile devices, it’s inevitable that advertisers are rushing to capture those eyeballs.”
The level of mobile ad spend is actually lower in France than other W European countries with the exception of Spain where it only makes up 1.6% of total media ad spend. However, France will begin to quickly catch-up on this metric and will go on to surpass neighbors such as Italy by 2016.