In recent years, the advertising sector in Italy has seen significant growth, driven above all byadvertising online. This phenomenon has been favored by various factors, including technological evolution, changing consumer habits and the new dynamics of the digital market.
L'Internet Media Observatory from the School of Management of the Polytechnic University of Milan provided a detailed overview of this trend, underlining how the Italian advertising market, worth 10.2 billion euros in 2023, is rapidly evolving. In this context, the Internet occupies a dominant position with a 48% share of the market, up 9% compared to the previous year.
Internet advertising: the growth of Big Tech
The Internet advertising market in Italy is strongly influenced by the performance of a few large international operators. These tech giants, including Google and Facebook, garner 82% of online advertising dollars, a percentage expected to grow by the end of 2024.
The format video it is one of the main drivers of this growth, with investments exceeding 2 billion euros, representing 39% of the total Internet advertising in our country. This increase is largely due to advertisers' increasing allocation of resources towards video applications, particularly those enjoyed on large screens.
But new channels and new technologies are emerging.
Industry news: audio advertising and branded podcasts
L'audio advertising it is an emerging segment which, despite still representing a small part of the online advertising market (43 million euros), is attracting growing interest. This type of advertising format is in every way similar to classic radio advertising, but takes advantage of the ever-growing popularity of apps like Spotify. Furthermore, it benefits from unique features, such as screen-free use and the fact that it is often unskippable, which make it particularly attractive to investors.
Another novelty is represented by the so-called branded podcasts, which are gaining popularity especially among the younger generations. These contents, also called corporate podcasts, also exploit platforms such as the aforementioned Spotify to tell anecdotes, curiosities and advantages of a particular brand, but in an indirect way. In fact, the objective of branded podcasts is not to directly sell a product, but rather to create a loyal customer base. According to Antonio Filoni of Bva Doxa, listening to Branded podcasts went from 14% in 2023 to 23% in 2024, with a peak of 35% among Gen Z.
The impact of artificial intelligence
Behind the growth of the sector and new technologies in the advertising field there is always: artificial intelligence (AI). If in the past AI was mainly used for data analysis and campaign management, the advent of generative AI has significantly expanded its applications.
Of course, the use of AI also presents challenges, such as the need to avoid cognitive biases and ensure user privacy. But these problems are not holding back the increasingly massive and creative use that advertisers are making of it. A growth that goes hand in hand with the capabilities of AI itself, which becomes more "intelligent" every day.
From this perspective, the Milan Polytechnic Observatory underlines the importance of using accurate and representative data to train algorithms and of constantly monitoring marketing activities to avoid harmful and counterproductive campaigns.
Privacy and new targeting solutions
Speaking of privacy, Google recently decided to change the way it collects user data, also driven by new rules introduced in various countries, in order to protect people's privacy. If you don't know what we are talking about, we invite you to read our article Goodbye to Google cookies.
This growing awareness has led to the development of alternative solutions such as behavioral targeting and contextual targeting. Universal identifiers, deterministic or probabilistic, are able to associate numerous touchpoints of the individual user on different channels and devices, offering an effective method to guarantee advertising addressability in the new cookieless landscape.
Attention metrics: a new paradigm
In this ever-changing landscape, the attention metrics have become a central theme in the debate on the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns. These metrics focus on measuring user attention towards an ad, covering aspects such as visibility, engagement and impact. The developers of these metrics are trying to extend their application to other environments, such as Ott platforms, apps and traditional media.
The objective is to create a standardized measurement system that can improve the quality of advertising inventory and reduce the phenomenon of Ad clutter, i.e. the overexposure of users to advertisements.
Conclusions
The future of online advertising in Italy appears promising, with sustained growth driven by technological innovation and new consumer behaviour. The importance of artificial intelligence, new attention metrics and privacy-compliant targeting solutions is destined to grow, redefining the strategies of sector operators and market balances. In this dynamic context, the ability to quickly adapt to new trends and effectively exploit new technologies will be crucial to the success of online advertising campaigns.
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