The big winner this year will be No. 3 player Amazon, which continues to take share from just about everyone. Its US ad business will grow more than 50% this year and its share of the US digital ad market will swell to 8.8% this year.

“Amazon offers a major benefit to advertisers, especially CPG and direct-to-consumer [D2C] brands,” said eMarketer forecasting director Monica Peart. “The platform is rich with shoppers’ behavioral data for targeting and provides access to purchase data in real time. This type of access was once only available through the retail partner to share at their discretion. But with Amazon’s suite of sponsored ads, marketers have unprecedented access to the 'shelves' where consumers are shopping.”

Traditional Ad Spending

Where are the digital dollars coming from? Directories, such as the Yellow Pages, will take the biggest hit—down 19% this year. Traditional print (newspapers and magazines) spending is a close second, which will drop nearly 18%. Overall, traditional ad spending’s share in the US will drop to 45.8% in 2019, from 51.4% last year.

“The steady shift of consumer attention to digital platforms has hit an inflection point with advertisers, forcing them to now turn to digital to seek the incremental gains in reach and revenues which are disappearing in traditional media advertising,” Peart said.