Classified Advertising Shines in Q1 IAB Online Advertising Report

Posted by IAB Australia On May 07, 2008 Media Releases

7 May, 2008: Online advertising in Australia has continued to grow steadily, reaching $384.5 million in the first quarter of 2008, a growth of 30.8 percent on the first quarter of 2007.  The results, which were released today in the IAB Online Advertising Expenditure Report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, show that all expenditure types recorded strong growth, but that Classified Advertising was the star growth area, increasing 8.4 percent from the last quarter of 2007 to reach 27.7 percent market share.  

By contrast search and directories increased 4.3 percent to 47.7 percent and after six months of strong growth, display advertising reduced 9.6 percent from last quarter to 24.6 percent.   

“The year on year growth in expenditure in both dollar and percentage terms is significant,” said Patty Keegan.  “It’s the sixth consecutive year-on-year increase for online advertising and supports the data recently released by CEASA that clearly showed online advertising is continuing to increase in both relevance and impact on the Australian advertising market,” said Patty Keegan, GM of IAB Australia.  

PwC lead partner for technology, entertainment and media, Rod Dring, said: “This quarter’s report shows that the current quarter has confirmed that the solid growth from last year has continued across all categories, when compared to the first quarter of 2007. There has been particularly strong growth in Classifieds. The report indicates the growth in Search & Directories has slowed to show similar growth rates to both General Display and Classifieds.”

Finance, computers and communications and automotive continue to be the highest spending advertiser industry categories for general display advertising, comprising over 50 percent of the general display spending.  Once again recruitment is the leading category for classifieds advertising in the first quarter for 2008 with real estate and automotive following.

Report Methodology
With the exception of Search and Directories, the May 2008 OAER does not include any estimates for non-contributors. Multi Channel network contributed for the first time to this report.  

The Search and Directories category includes an estimate of advertising expenditure received by Google, the largest company in the Search market.  Due to estimates not being included for non-survey contributors for the General Display and Classified categories, these markets can be considered larger than as reported in the OAER.

Reports prior to the March 2007 quarter report included estimates for all categories. This change in methodology has the impact of understating growth rates when comparing 2007 figures to 2006 figures.

Report Availability
The IAB Online Advertising Expenditure Report will be available free of charge on the IAB Australia website by 13th May 2008.  

/Ends

About the Interactive Advertising Bureau
IAB Australia officially launched in October 2005 with Australia’s six major online publishers -Fairfax Digital, Google, News Digital Media, ninemsn, Sensis, and Yahoo!7 – together with the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) as its founding members.  The IAB now has 40 member companies, drawn from a broad spectrum of online advertising and marketing organizations, technology and services companies.   

The group has three key priorities: to promote the standardisation of ad formats; to ensure timeliness and transparency of industry data, and to educate the marketplace about the value of online advertising. 

For further information about IAB Australia please visit: https://www.iabaustralia.com.au

For more editorial information please contact:
Pru Quinlan
Einsteinz Communications
T: (02) 8905 0995
E: pru@einsteinz.com.au

IAB Australia

IAB Australia is the peak trade association for online advertising in Australia. As one of over 43 IAB offices globally and with a rapidly growing membership, the role of the IAB is to support sustainable and diverse investment in digital advertising across all platforms in Australia.

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