SYDNEY: The head of Australia's peak online advertising body expects online ad spend to equal that of free-to-air TV by 2013 following record Q4 online ad revenue.
Speking on the release of the latest PricewaterhouseCoopers/Interactive Advertising Bureau online advertising expenditure report, IAB chief executive Paul Fisher said that he had revised his previous forecast of 2014, and now believed that 2013 would see online equal the share of newspapers and TV.
"If you look at our market share," said Fisher, "we were gaining about two percentage point shares per year and the GFC accelerated that to four points per year. I expect that by 2013, we will see online, television and newspaper all having about a 23% share of the market."
To the three months to December 2009, total online advertising expenditure was $513 million - the largest fourth quarter recorded and an increase of $50.5 million of 10.9% on the same period in 2008.
Classifieds was the only category to see a decline in expenditure over 2009,
with a dip of 2% compared to the year to December 2008, thanks to a tightening
on the employment, real estate and automotive markets.
Both the search
& directories and the online display categories posted significant
increases, up 17% and 7% respectively for the year. The overall market grew
9% in 2009.
General display advertising and classifieds advertising accounted for 27.7% and 21.7% of the total advertising expenditure for the fourth-quarter 2009, respectively, while search & directories advertising comprised the remaining 50.6%.
General display, classifieds and search & directories advertising all grew from Q3.
"Search is the dominant category," said Fisher "and I expect that dominance to carry on. It's about to surpass the billion dollar mark and it will still have double digit growth of 10% to 15% this year."
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