Online advertising market cracks $6.8bn

Australia’s online advertising market has chalked up its fastest year-on-year growth in five years, reaching $6.8 billion for the 2016 financial year.

According to the latest IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers Online Advertising Expenditure Report, strong growth in all online advertising segments helped bolster spend by $1.6 billion over the past year, pushing up total spending to $6.8bn for the 12 months to 30 June 2016. This represented a 29.7 per cent increase year-on-year and the fastest year-on-year growth in online advertising for five years.

Double-digit growth was recorded in all segments, including a 43.3 per cent increase in display, making up $2.5bn of the market spend. Classifieds also had 21 per cent growth to $1.2bn, while directories saw 24 per cent year-on-year growth to $3.1bn.

Mobile was the lead performer, with spend leaping 72 per cent to $1.9bn, while video grew 55 per cent to $600 million over the same period.

IAB CEO, Vijay Solanki, said the continued rise of mobile and video categories was helping push online advertising to close to half of all advertising spend. He noted real estate, automotive, retail and FMCG industry categories as leading the way in terms of digital. Real estate for example, saw the largest share growth over the past year, growing to 13.2 per cent.

“They have built capability across all digital platforms, especially in mobile and video,” Solanki said. “They know how to use content, technology and data to help achieve their marketing goals efficiently.”

According to the latest GroupM media spending forecasts, Australia’s total media spend is expected to be $14.6bn in 2016, up 2.4 per cent on 2015, with digital spend at $6.7bn, a rise of 11 per cent.

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