How Many Ads Do We See a Day?

Today, everywhere you click, you are seemingly bombarded with ads telling you to “buy this” or “subscribe now” or “check out this or that”.

So, a natural question arises…

How many ads do we see a day?

We’ll find out in this article.

How Many Ads Do We See Online?

Unfortunately, “How many ads do we see every day?” is one of those oft-asked but difficult to precisely answer questions.

First of all, ads can be online and offline. Or digital and traditional.

In this article, we’re not focused on offline, or traditional ads, like TV, newspaper, magazine, radio, billboard, etc, so we’ll mostly leave them aside here.

Simply put, if we try to add them into the calculation, our numbers would be much higher.

And it’s not like we don’t have a lot to think about when it comes to online ads. Here are just a few examples of ads you’ll see at some point on the Internet:

• PPC ads (Google, Bing)
• Display ads
• Banner ads
• Social Media ads (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
• Video ads (YouTube)
• Vine Ads
• Email Ads
• Retargeting Ads
• In-game Ads
• Podcast Ads
• Etc.

Now, of course, you won’t be exposed to all of those (luckily). For example, if you don’t use Bing, Tumblr, or Vine, you won’t see those ads.

However, like anyone using Google to search, you’ll see a lot of Google and YouTube ads.

Back in 2007, market research firm Yankelovich ran a survey of 4,110 people and found out that an average person sees up to 5,000 adverts every day.

Today, that number is even higher and the average person sees around 10,000 ads per day, though only a quarter of that or less will be relevant.

Keeping in mind that 77% of average users will search for something on Google at least 3 times per day, that is a lot of ads we’re exposed to.

The Role of Google AdWords and Facebook Ads

The advent of both Google AdWords (now called simply Google Ads) and Facebook Ads (which, coincidentally, happened also in 2007), helped the advertisers a great deal.

Google launched AdWords in 2000 and by 2007, its revenue from ads was 16.41 billion US dollars. In 2022, it was $224.47 billion. That’s nearly 13 times more.

Google’s Ad Revenue From 2001 to 2022

As for Facebook, the company dived into the ad business a bit later, in 2007. However, it didn’t take long for it to start making a huge profit from it as well.

In 2022, Facebook’s advertising revenue amounted to $113.6 billion, which shows a decrease from the $115.6 billion earned in 2021, but still marks a significant increase from the almost $85 billion generated in 2020.

Facebook Meta Ad Revenue From 2017 to 2022

Add to this YouTube, which makes up 27% of online video ad spending in the United States, and other platforms like Instagram, and you get a lot of ads.

Who Spends the Most on Ads?

With over 5 billion people online around the world, it is undoubtedly a good idea for a company to spend some of its money on advertising itself.

But which country or industry spends the most on digital advertising?

Total digital ad spending is expected to reach nearly $646 billion in 2024.

If we look at different countries and how much they spend on ads, in 2022, the US far outperformed (and outspent) other countries with $340 billion spent on ads.

China, the next country on the list, invested less than half of that amount, with expenditures totaling $179.7 billion.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the ranking, Burundi spent $33.15 million, marking a staggering $339.9 billion gap from the United States’ spending.

However, in 2020, most countries reduced their ad spending, so the only major market that saw growth was China, 7.4%.

When it comes to the different industries, leading industries in terms of global digital ad spending are:

1. Insurance $99,930 per month per company
2. Online media $66,625 per month per company
3. Internet service providers $45,225 per month per company
4. Computer games $36,839 per month per company
5. Legal services $34,611 per month per company

On the other hand, if we look at the percentage companies allocate to advertising from the budget, the highest number comes from the following industries:

1. Retail 21.9%
2. Automotive 12.6%
3. Financial 12.2%
4. Telecommunications 10.7%
5. Consumer products 8.8%

Of course, it’s also interesting to look at the spending growth, or in most cases decline, by industry in the last five years.

Specifically, in the US, most companies had to severely cut down on the ad and marketing spend in general and are only now returning to the 2017 numbers.

US Digital Ad Sending Growth, by Industry (From 2019 to 2023)

Siteefy Survey Findings

To learn more about ads, we decided to conduct an on-page survey and find out directly from our readers. This survey poll is ongoing and the results will be updated regularly. Here are the key findings so far:

🟣 The vast majority of people (93%) see most often online ads placed on social media or search engines.

🟣 40% of readers use ad blockers to avoid ads online and almost 30% of users simply skip them when possible.

🟣 60% of respondents feel that ads somewhat influence their purchasing decisions while 30% think that ads have no influence on their purchases.

🟣 Among the most memorable ads are humorous (36%) and visually striking (26%) ads. Emotional (14%) and informative (13%) ads seem to be less memorable.

Here are more detailed survey results:

Final Thoughts

Every day, we are exposed to thousands of ads, both online and offline, but we’ve learned to ignore them for the most part.

People are less and less affected by ads, and at best, these will get a “meh” response. Unfortunately, for most companies, that means throwing even more ads in your face in the hopes that some catch your attention.

Are they? Let us know in the comments below.