Advertisers spent a record $225 billion on online ads last year

Despite industry uncertainty around proposed privacy legislation, loss of attribution, and general economic uneasiness, advertisers continued to pile money into online advertising.

$$$$: Advertisers spent a record-setting $225 billion on digital advertising in the US last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which on Tuesday published a report on online advertising revenue. The IAB worked with the firm PwC on the report.

It’s still a bit of a slowdown compared to previous years, growing 7.3% year over year compared to a 10.8% increase between 2021 and 2022.

• Perhaps unsurprisingly, retail media revenue popped 16.3% YoY, reaching $43.7 billion in 2023.
• Video advertising revenue jumped 10.6% YoY, rising to $52.1 billion, with streaming contributing about $22 billion, and the IAB expects continued investments in live-streamed sports to keep the category humming.
• Social advertising grew 8.7% YoY to $64.9 billion.
• Audio advertising grew 18.9%, reaching nearly $7 billion. That’s a lotta podcast ads.

Now searching: Search and display advertising, the bread and butter of the digital ad ecosystem, grew 5.2% to $88.8 billion, and 4% to $66 billion, respectively.

Takeaways: Going into a rapidly changing year as a whole, advertisers are having to contend with changes coming from inside the industry itself, the report points out: Google and Apple are continuing to invest in privacy-preserving technology, including Google’s phase-out of third-party cookies and Apple’s limitations on data collection across iOS devices.