Emarketer’s latest report, The Future of Digital: Europe, offers an in-depth investigation into the region. It provides a deep dive into Europe’s deeply diverse digital marketing economies, segmenting and identifying key regional developments with projections.
With marketing and advertising a key part of the consumer and customer experience, knowing your audience at a more local level is key to hitting the right notes. This report could help, alongside your business data to identify what trends work. And what audiences will and won’t accept with adverts and content.
CMOs should set, not follow, trends
The report provides an exhaustive commentary on the region’s media habits, ecommerce trends, and digital ad spending developments for CMOs.
“The biggest thing we’re looking at is the bellwether trends being set by the market leader (the UK). The EU-4 (aka the Sleeping Giants, as we’ve labelled them) are the countries where these trends are then seeing the biggest potential for growth, certainly from an advertiser perspective, as they follow the UK’s lead. Says Bill Fisher, co-author of the report and principal analyst at Emarketer.
“What are these trends? Well, essentially, ad revenue growth is getting harder to come by in the most developed markets, so rather than seeing ad dollars free-flowing into digital, we’re now witnessing growth areas “within” digital. Spend is having to migrate around the broad digital category. And the biggest beneficiaries are retail media and connected TV.” Fisher continued, “This has significant ramifications for brands and marketers. For example, it took 6 years for retail media advertising spend to pass £3bn in the UK. It took social media advertising 13 years to pass that milestone, and search 17 years. Being able to pivot quickly should thus be an increasingly important string in a CMO’s bow.”
A tale of sleeping digital marketing giants
The report explores the current state of digital across Europe as a whole. It identifies four distinct digital economies, based on digital ad spend and ecommerce maturity. Unsurprisingly, the UK leads the way, but seeing Spain, Germany, Italy and France badged as sleeping giants, behind on the digital advertising curve is rather concerning.
The report also explores where future digital growth will come from, and analyses the implications for advertisers and retailers among the mature and nascent nations. With GenAI taking over in marketing, it will be exciting to see who can accelerate through the rankings.
Whatever the region, with chief marketing officers taking over in the boardroom, the standing and value of marketing will continue to increase. And, as marketing automation and personalisation features boom in software, being a digital-first advertiser will be vital for any growing business. Use the report as valuable insights if you market across Europe or want to focus on the details of your home territory.