The Australian online advertising market grew 5.6% to $9.3 billion in 2019 despite slower growth compared to other years, according to the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report compiled by PwC.
All online advertising categories showed growth, while video advertising was again the growth driver in the general display category with 19.9% growth year-on-year.
For the full calendar year 2019, the general display advertising category maintained steady segment share and growth of 5.1% to reach $3.5 billion for the year.
Classifieds grew just 1.7% to $1.7 billion.
Search and directories growth slowed to 7.7% to reach $4.2 billion. However, the category still outperformed the market overall.
47% of content publishers' general display inventory was bought via media agencies using either an insertion order or another non-programmatic method for the calendar year 2019.
Of the balance, 29% of general display advertising was bought programmatically with fixed cost per mille (CPM), 8% was bought via guaranteed inventory and 17% of all display advertising was bought directly from advertisers.
The report also found that for calendar year 2019, content publishers' video inventory was most regularly viewed on a desktop at 37%, while viewing via connected TVs (CTV) was 35% and 28% viewed via mobile video advertising.
However, for the second half of the year, CTV overtook desktop as the leading device in terms of revenue.
While automotive advertising continues to lead general display expenditure at 21.5% share, travel advertising has broken into the top five industries for general display expenditure for the first time at 7.5% share for the year.
Retail increased its use of video advertising for the year to reach 10.7% share.
“It should be no surprise to people in the industry to see a slowing of digital ad growth in 2019 as the whole market has seen media investments under pressure and the growth rate under half of what the market experienced 2018," IAB Australia CEO Gai Le Roy says.
“We have seen a further shift in video inventory dominating the overall general display category and standard display formats contracting by 16%. It was encouraging to see the travel advertiser category gain share following investment and development of travel content by a number of publishers.”
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