Adobe has released its State of Digital Advertising 2018 report, based on:

• 183B visits to US websites
• 9B TV ad impressions
• 150B e-mails
• Survey of 1000 US consumers and 250 digital marketers in February-March 2018

Key findings:

• Relevance of ads is personal, depending on demographics, device and other factors.
• All age groups except 71+ think ads have improved in the past 2 years.
• Social media ads are most relevant for Gen Z and Millennials, TV for all others.
• Millennials believe social-media ads are getting more relevant.
• TV is seen as having most relevant ads - but not improving.
• Men find TV most relevant, while women prefer social media.
• Smartphone use is growing, tablet and desktop use shrinking
• Overall average monthly ad spend is up 4.6%, but mobile ad spend is up 22.9%.
• Smartphone use doubles perception of ad relevance.
• Length of time people will watch videos varies significantly by US state.
• Across ages and sexes, majority of people find ads easy to ignore.
• Consumers say only 14% of branding ads and 3% of direct-response ads are directly relevant to them.

Some actionable items here for travel/tourism marketers:

• Across ages and sexes, TV ads are still considered most relevant. Use TV if you can make the necessary investment pay.
• Millennials are buying travel/tourism products, and members of Gen Z have significant influence on these buys. You need an effective social-media presence to reach these groups.
• You need to be findable and usable via smartphones - ensure that this is the case. Remember Google wants you to create and deliver your advertising for mobile first.

And a couple of points of special interest:

1. If you're using video in marketing, consider Adobe's map of attention span by state, reproduced here:

If your audience is in New England, don't use California-length videos. Who'd have thought?

2. Re consumer perception that only "3% of direct-response ads are directly relevant" to them: that's a problem if you're paying for ad impressions (CPM basis) but not necessarily if you're paying for clicks (as with Google Ads) - because those 3% of people who find your ad to be "directly relevant" to them are the people who are going to buy your stuff, and any clicks from the other 97% are only going to cost you bandwidth and money.

For more on improving mobile performance, go here for more information on using Google Analytics Site Speed metrics to improve your site's ranking in mobile search, and here to get ACRO Global/s free SEO audit of your site using the Google Lighthouse Tool.