In 2016, the scale of the in-feed ad market grew to 140.1 billion yen, up 80% year on year. It is forecasted to increase 2.2 times to 301.3 billion yen by 2022, and the video format is expected to occupy one third
CyberAgent, Inc. (Head office: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; President: Susumu Fujita; listed in the first section of Tokyo Stock Exchange; Stock Code: 4751) surveyed the trend of the in-feed ad market in Japan, in cooperation with Digital InFact, Inc. (Head office: Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; President: Tomoyuki Noshita).
As users started using smartphones to see the media more frequently, a lot of media, including social media, news, and leading portal sites, shifted to new content display formats according to the characteristics of devices and media, and the display based on the content feed optimized for the time axis called the timeline type is being popularized.
In-feed ads have been developed as a new ad format based on users’ experience of viewing the media, which is outside the scope of conventional ad standards, in social media, including Facebook and Twitter. At present, in-feed ads are being introduced to mainly smartphone media, which offer content in the timeline format.
In 2016, in-feed ads, especially those in social media, were highly evaluated by a broad range of advertisers for their high advertisement effect, and the demand for them grew more significantly than expected.
In this survey, the annual sales of in-feed ads*1 distributed through the Internet are estimated, and the market scale is forecasted*2.
The following items (2015-2022) have been surveyed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Forecast of the scale of the in-feed ad market <For each purpose of promotion/the ratio of sales for smartphones>
[2] Estimation of the in-feed ad market <for each ad distributor>
[3] Estimation of the in-feed ad market <for still and video>
■ Challenges and future of the in-feed ad market
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[ 1 ] Forecast of the scale of the in-feed ad market
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
In 2016, the scale of the in-feed ad market reached 140.1 billion yen, up 80% year on year, and the sales of in-feed ads for smartphones accounted for about 96%. The sales of in-feed ads for promoting websites made up 76%, while that for promoting apps accounted for 24%. The market scale in 2022 is estimated to be 301.3 billion yen, 220% of the scale in 2016.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
In 2016, the increase of in-feed ads by game companies, which most demand the promotion of apps, ebbed away, while leading EC enterprises’ demand for the promotion of apps other than games remained favorable. As for the promotion of websites, the advertisers who have been utilizing Internet ads started using in-feed ads more, and so their ad cost grew. The ratio of the demand for website promotion is estimated to keep increasing gently.
In addition, the provision of in-feed ad services in the media exclusively for smartphones progressed, and the ratio of sales for smartphones rose, accounting for 96%.
[ 2 ] Estimation of the in-feed ad market
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
In 2016, social media accounted for 64% of the in-feed ad market. As ad distributors will be diversified more, it is forecasted that social media will make up 60%, and news, portal sites, etc. will account for 40% in 2022.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
In 2016, the demand for ads in social media grew considerably. In addition to the strong demand for ads in the conventional media, the ad services for new media contributed to the growth of the market, and attractive ad formats were offered, increasing the options for advertisers and boosting demand.
On the other hand, the distributors of in-feed ads were diversified further in 2016, and the ratio of ads in news, portal sites, etc. other than social media increased from the previous year.
It is forecasted that social media, which now account for 64%, will keep leading the growth of the market, and ad distributors, including news and portal sites, will be diversified further.
[ 3 ] Estimation of the in-feed ad market
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The demand for the in-feed ads in the video format especially for social media grew, and the ratio of video ads accounted for 13% in 2016.
It is forecasted that the demand for ads via news, portal sites, etc. other than social media will grow and account for one third of the entire market in 2022.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
In 2016, the ads in the video format, which can render a broad range of things, in social media increased considerably, and the ratio of video ads in the in-feed ad market grew from the previous year. The video format was broadly accepted by not only the advertisers who aim to foster medium and long-term relationships with users, but also the advertisers who want to boost short-term cost-effectiveness for promoting products and services.
It is forecasted that in-feed video ads will be distributed also via the media other than social media as demand for them will expand, and the ratio of video ads will keep increasing in the medium term, accounting for one third of the market in 2022.
■Future of the in-feed ad
In-feed ads are considered as one of the formats that prioritize usability in social media, mainly those for smartphones, and being popularized.
In-feeds ads are expected to undergo some changes as a format suited for users as the preferences of users and media types will change. It is expected that the efforts for creating and rendering new things for users will foster good relations among users, content, and advertisements, and the scale of the in-feed ad market will keep growing and reach 301.3 billion yen in 2022.
Our company will keep striving to solve problems with corporate promotion and improve the effect of advertisement, in order to contribute to the development of the in-feed ad market.
※1 The definition of an in-feed ad and the classification of products in this survey are as follows.
・Collective term for advertisements in the same format as feed-type content displayed in some media
※2 This survey was conducted based on the interviews with enterprises in the Internet ad field, publicly available information, data owned by the survey organizer and Digital InFact, etc. The market scale was estimated from the ad costs spent by advertisers.
■ Outline of the survey
Survey organizer: CyberAgent, Inc.
Survey period: Oct. to Dec. 2016
Surveying method: To interview personnel in the video ad market, refer to the data owned by the survey organizer and the surveying institution, and collect publicly available information.
Survey target: In-feed ads
Surveying institution: Digital InFact, Inc.
*If you reprint or use any content of this survey, please write our corporate name as the copyright holder as follows: Copyright © CyberAgent, Inc. All Rights Reserved.