Global findings

Worldwide, digital advertising currently accounts for 19.8% of total media advertising spend and according to eMarketer, it will account for 21.7% by the end of 2013.

By 2016, experts are predicting that it will account for more than a quarter of all media advertising spend. 

Digital marketing is steadily growing and the report highlighted that digital video advertisements took centre stage last year, seeing a 43.8% growth over 2011, which is largely due to the increasing adoption of digital video.

Rich media advertisements were also very successful, with 63% viewable, and the report points out that there is a direct correlation between visibility and performance.

The most viewable rich advertisement formats were commercial breaks (97%), floating advertisements (96%) and wallpaper advertisements (83%), indicating that these highly interactive and persistent formats are valuable for brands that are using viewability as a key performance indicator. 

APAC findings

For the Asia-Pacific region there were a few key takeaways from the report, which include:

1. Australia and New Zealand are mature markets nestled in a growing region: The report highlights that both countries are drivers of economic growth, including digital marketing.

2. Dwell rates coincide with strong expansion: In Australia and New Zealand, average user dwell times in seconds were 47.1 for rich media, 58.5 for expandable banners, 4.2 for floating advertisements, 25.0 for floating advertisements with a reminder and 37.4 for the polite banner. 

3. In-stream video advertisements shine in Japan, while rich media is solid in China and Taiwan: In-stream video has a 3.5% click-through rate (CTR) in Japan and a 77.1% fully played rate. With rich media, 0.19% of Chinese internet users click through and 0.38% of Taiwanese users do. 

4. South Asia is a developing market: South Asia has the potential to move to digital advertising at scale, boasting high dwell rates, average dwell times and expansion times. Average dwell rates for polite banners was 2.2%, 7.0% for expandable banners, 32.2% for floating advertisements and 3.7% for rich media.

5. East Asia experienced better CTRs than North America: East Asia had consistently higher CTR’s than North America when it comes to rich media (3.5% vs 0.14%), in-stream video advertisements (2.04% vs 1.11%), mobile (2.04% vs 0.88%), expandable banners (0.36% vs 0.16%) and polite banners (0.15% vs 0.1%).