Advice | Advertise in Fort Myers and Southwest Florida

Online Advertising In SWFL: How Much Will Be Spent in 2022?

Written by Larry Julius | Jan 21, 2022 2:51:41 PM

Fort Myers-Naples area business owners are expected to spend $620 million advertising online in 2022. This, according to Borrell Associates, a company that tracks advertising expenditures across the country.

Borrell's forecast indicates that almost 50% of Southwest Florida's online expenditures will be in the form of paid search. The most recognizable type of this advertising is the paid ads that appear adjacent to the results of almost every search query on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Borrell's forecast also indicates that approximately 27% of online expenditures will be in the form of display advertising. This consists of traditional banner ads that appear across millions of websites and apps, including social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. According to SmallBizGenius.net, the average SWFL area consumer is served more than 1700 of these ads per month.

Video advertising in Fort Myers is forecast to account for 23% of all online ad dollars in 2022. Like search and display, millions of websites can support this type of advertising. This includes sites, apps, and platforms like YouTube, Roku Channel, Hulu, Paramount+, and most social media sites.

The remainder of online advertising dollars is expected to be spent on audio advertising, including streaming sites like Pandora and Spotify; or email marketing campaigns.

So many Fort Myers business owners are investing a large portion of their marketing budgets into online advertising because that's where their customers are.
According to Nielsen, more than 95% of Fort Myers adults have access to the internet. In addition, ubiquitous technology such as computers, tablets, smartphones, and connected TVs allow local consumers to go online whenever they choose, which, for some adults, is always.

The Pew Research Center, a public opinion research company, reports that one-in-three consumers say they are online constantly. A 50% increase from 2015. In total, 85% of consumers report that they connect at least one time every day.

A study from Nielsen among Fort Myers adults confirms that the majority spends way more than 10 hours per week consuming online content.

Among Fort Myers's millennials, a generation that now accounts for well over one-third of all local consumer spending, the amount of time spent connected to the internet is far greater than the adult population as a whole.

As all Fort Myers area business owners consider their marketing investments for 2022, online advertising should be among the media considered.

Zohaib Hassan Patoli, a member of Forbes Agency Council, recently observed, "Traditional marketing is still effective for getting your message out there to people. But if you want to truly engage with your customers and know what messaging they respond to, nothing is more effective than digital marketing."

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