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Australian social ad spend to hit $706.3m in five years: Forrester

Mobile driving social advertising spending in Asia Pacific

Australian annual social ad spending will hit $706.3 million within five years, according to new predictions from Forrester.

This year, the analyst firm is forecasting spending on social advertising in Australia will hit $240.9 million. The rate of growth in Australian social advertising spend is predicted to trail China and India, but be significantly higher than Japan and South Korea.

Spending on social media in Asia-Pacific remains relatively low compared to the more mature US market, the report said.

Mobile is, not surprisingly, proving the key driver for the growth in social ad spend. Forrester's report — Asia Pacific Social Media Advertising Spending Forecast, 2014 To 2019 said that by 2019 there will be more than 1 billion people accessing social media using mobile devices across Australia, Japan, China, India and South Korea.

"On average, more than three-quarters of consumers in the five AP markets already access social media from a mobile phone; this number will continue to grow quickly through 2019," Forrester analyst, Xiaofeng Wang wrote in a blog entry.

"In this period [2014-2019], marketing leaders in Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea will increase their investment in advertising on social media (excluding mobile messaging apps) at a 21.6 per cent compound annual growth rate, reaching $5.8 billion by 2019," the analyst wrote.

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