By 2017, online ad spend may surpass television ad sales, making online the leading arena for advertising in the U.S., resulting from increasing consumer shifts from traditional media to online video, internet radio sources including Pandora, Spotify, and podcasts, in addition to increasing access to the mobile web via rising penetration for smartphones, tablets, and 4G data plans.

Further driving expected increases in online ad sales is the increasing efficacy of online ads, with a higher percentage of consumers reporting that these ads result in an online or offline purchase. Yet perhaps the most central driver for increased online ad sales is the extent to which consumers are turning to the internet for product research, which is resulting in rapidly increasing sales of search ads. As such, how often consumers conduct research online, and their methods of doing so, are among the main topics of this report.

In spite of rapid growth, numerous challenges face the industry, including difficulty in serving relevant ads in spite of high-tech programming aimed to do just that, an explosion in potential ad space in the mobile app market, and increasing opportunities for “social context” advertising. This report focuses on how ad sellers can effectively market to brands, as well as how brands can best utilize the online space to appeal to consumers. To achieve this aim, subjects explored in the report include the reach and relevancy of search ads, banner ads, internet radio ads, and mobile ads, including ads placed in mobile apps. The report also presents consumer expectations for ads that entertain, attitudes to internet privacy, and the responses of teens and kids to internet ads.