The Biggest Advertising Budgets in Q2 [Report]

Over $2.7 billion was spent on digital advertising by the top 500 advertisers across devices during Q2 2017. Tax software companies faded off as their season came to a close, allowing room for other top ad spenders to climb to the top of the rankings. Samsung and LG heated up across digital, competiting neck-in-neck with each other by spend and impressions. Desktop buyers continuted to prefer direct deals, over programmatic, accounting for the majority of spend from the top 500 advertisers. And, Wix.com upped their digital presence with a huge desktop video push during Q2, gaining the brand 2.4B impressions.

See which advertisers had the biggest advertising budgets during the quarter with our exclusive Q2 Top Advertisers Report and read on for more highlights.

Samsung vs. LG

Samsung increased spend on desktop by over 450 percent compared to Q1 numbers, barely edging out competitor LG. The two companies were neck-in-neck, across all device-types and formats with Samsung taking 53% of the spend share between the two brands. Samsung also released the most digital creatives, running over 1500 unique creatives during the quarter compared to only 850 from LG.

Samsung invested the majority of their digital budget on top site YouTube, while LG put 56% of their ad budget on Amazon. Not surprisingly, the two brands flip flopped site strategy with Amazon coming in as Samsung’s second top site by spend, and YouTube ranking second for LG. 

Samsung’s top campaigns were for the new Galaxy S8 mobile phone and the Galaxy Tab S3 tablet. On the LG side, the top campaigns were for the new G6 mobile phone and Super UHD TVs. Both brands relied primarily on desktop/display placements, accounting for over 70% of spend and impressions for each advertiser.

Desktop Buyers Still Prefer Direct Deals

Eighty percent of desktop spend from the top 500 advertisers went to direct deals during Q2. Only thirteen percent went through ad networks, led by Google AdX + AdSense and Amazon. This was a slight increase compared to Q1 direct spend, taking share from ad network buys.

As for impressions, direct deals delivered 46 percent of the total display impressions - up six percent from Q1. Ad network buys accounted for 38 percent of the pie, down from 43 percent in Q1.

Wix.com Goes Big on Video

The website creation company Wix.com shelled out over $42 million on desktop video placements during Q2, making them the top spender for the device-type and format. The brand went big on video, investing 98 percent of their digital budget on desktop video placements, garnering 2.4 billion impressions. The top site for Wix was YouTube, consuming nearly all of the brand's desktop video spend.

Wix.com's top creative was a one minute long video creative that had a flight date of April 19th, and was last seen on July 3rd. With introductory messaging stating that "You Need a Website," the creative ran on YouTube's homepage in addition to YouTube channels such as Pocketnow, Unbox Therapy, RemLife, and Vsauce.

Newcomers to the top ten in Q2 included Wix, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Toyota, Kellogg Company, Mondelez International, Citigroup, and Samsung. Sony Games, Hulu, NBC, Verizon, Amazon.com, NBC, A Dog’s Purpose Movie, and Honda all fell down the rankings.

Download the full Q2 Top Advertisers Report here, detailing the top ten ad spenders across desktop, mobile, and video.

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