For many businesses, large and small, marketing is confusing and stressful. What media works best? What can they afford? Do they stick with what has worked in the past or try something new?

We looked at large and small businesses from BIA’s SAM™ survey to understand what new media they will be using for advertising in 2019. With 35% of businesses surveyed planning to increase their advertising spend in 2019, we wondered what type of businesses will be increasing? TV/Cable and radio advertisers show better intentions in increasing their ad spend (around 50% ). Among the different verticals we track – Entertainment and Financial Services businesses were the most optimistic.  When it comes to business size, larger businesses are most likely to increase spend. No matter if they are increasing or maintaining there wasn’t a huge difference in where large and small businesses plan to increase ad spend. When asked what new media channels they planned to add in 2019, both are most interested in adding email marketing, video, and print ads.

Internally several of BIA’s analysts were surprised to see print media so high on the list, until they realized that direct mail was also part of that category, along with newspapers, magazines, coupons, etc. For businesses in some verticals, direct mail still commands a large portion of their ad spend, as reflected in BIA’s annual advertising forecast, although digital channels are showing considerable ad spend growth.

With most advertisers planning to maintain their 2018 spend levels, sellers can move the needle by offering what they are implementing in 2019 – email, video, and print ads are just the start. We will have more insights for the challenging ad sales market of 2019 in future posts.

The SAM™ survey data as well as our local forecast data is available through BIA’s local advertising dashboard, BIA ADVantage and is offered in a searchable, downloadable format. Insights and analytical reports from the survey are also provided. Additional information about BIA’s SAM study can be found here.