Nearly all brands spend a significant amount yearly on marketing and advertising, through a variety of outlets.
Here are some of the largest marketers by total ad spend annually.
Proctor & Gamble – over $12 billion
P&G has a large number of consumer brands that you might not all recognize as being a part of P&G. Their brands range from laundry products like bounce, downy, gain, tide to bounty, Charmin to grooming products like Braun, gilete, cascade, dawn, Febreze, and many others.
This wide range of consumer-facing brands sold globally is the primary driver of the massive spending. Each brand has specific marketing teams that work with outside agencies to build strategies that best match the target audience for each brand.
Amazon – $6.8 billion
Making a massive rise in ad spend, Amazon continued to ramp up media buys and campaigns, including a number of high-budget tv productions and even Superbowl ads. It’s speculated that Amazon could become the largest overall spender in the next few years.
L’Oreal $6.7 billion
Another massive consumer products firm with a wide range of brands and products that must stay in front of consumers to maintain growth.
Volkswagen – $4.5 billion
VW is the largest automaker in the world, while many in the US know it for its emissions scandal and VW bug, VW sells millions of cars per year globally. Again, this is a highly competitive B2C industry with lots of ad spend by its competitors. As carmakers invest in and start to release electric models, marketing is often using these models as halo vehicles to feature in ads. The changing emissions regulations and ultimate push towards electric vehicles will change the marketing focus for automakers worldwide. Coca-Cola – Over $4 billion
Nestle – Over $4 billion
Expedia – Over $4 billion
With the global pandemic, Expedia has understandably so reduced its ad spend during a time when very few are planning vacations. As the pandemic hopefully subsides over time, no doubt Expedia will quickly ramp up spend again.
Comcast – Over $6 billion
With more cord-cutters than ever and increasing competition from a multitude of streaming services, Comcast has continued to spend huge amounts on digital marketing and ad campaigns. Comcast has also tried to keep consumers seeking streaming services on it’s Xfinity internet service by providing peacock and providing easy access to other services like Netflix, HBO max etc.
Tesla : $0
Oddly enough, Tesla has spent no money on advertising which might come as a surprise to many, as every single other mainstream car company maintains some sort of paid channel ad spend. Tesla is uniquely positioned to not need traditional marketing. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, remains adamant that traditional marketing spend would not help Tesla at this point. Tesla is one of the most talked-about companies globally and has a market worth more than the combined valuations of the next 4-5 largest automakers combined. The sheer amount of media attention that Tesla has received has been a major in its ability to outsell production capacity while spending nothing on paid media channels.
Marketing Trends in a Covid-19 pandemic
Digital spend is a significant portion of total spend across these brands. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused many consumers to prefer to buy online whether through Amazon, or direct with the company, or through big retailers like Walmart and Kroger providing easy store pickup. But the effects are clear for advertisers, and it’s that must focus on digital advertising harder than ever before.
Optimizing e-commerce store listing and making sure that their products are ranking as high as possible on sites like Amazon is also critically important.
Many large brands, like J&J, spend huge amounts of money and time to better their e-commerce page listings with better copy, better images, and improved optimization of keywords and text.
Even smaller businesses have been forced to adapt to the increased demand for eCommerce service with a huge number of small brands creating web stores for the first time, or dramatically improving the ability for their customers to buy from them online with shipping or curbside service.
The companies that have been able to successfully navigate this transition are able to grow and outcompete rivals that are slower to embrace alternative forms of purchase.
Where do they spend their budgets?
This varies from company to company, but TV represents a massive portion of total spend as does digital, which can be anything from AdWords PPC to email campaigns and SEO.
It’s critically important that these companies all have significant data and monitor their spending over time to optimize it to maximize the profitability of their campaigns.
Their spending varies so much largely because their customers are different and different types of customers buy different products in different ways.
Video is increasingly important for brands to improve their ROI on digital spending, as digital ads have a higher CTR and stronger engagement than traditional static advertisements.
While video ads are somewhat more expensive to make than static ads, the more likely than not will increase campaign ROI at a level while increasing overall engagement.
Video ad campaigns can come in many forms, whether B2B or B2C and are used as product explainers on e-commerce store pages. Often videos that are created for one purpose can be used in a variety of channels across a long period of time, which also makes the investment in the content a solid choice for many businesses.
Being able to use video on social media pages like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and of course youtube are also great ways to build a larger audience and keep current customers engaged with your content.
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Volan Media is a top Knoxville, Tennessee video production and marketing agency with years of experience working on a range of projects, everything from 1800s steam railway locomotives to the most cutting edge cancer treatments. If you turn on the tv in East Tennessee, chances are you’ll see one of our ads! We are a top Knoxville, Tennessee video production firm, with projects commonly being used for explainer videos, broadcast/cable tv ads, digital ads, recruitment. Volan Media also is a top Knoxville Tennessee virtual Reality video production firm, having made a large number of 360 videos and VR productions across a range of industries, including various tradeshow VR 360 videos, treatment and branding VR videos, and VR experiences.
