NZ online ad spend up 15.8% during record quarter
Print, TV and other traditional media may still be starved of advertising. But on the web, the recession’s not touching the sides.
Total online advertising spend was up 15.8% over the year-ago quarter to $57.69 million for the three months ending September 30, according the latest Interactive Advertising Bureau/PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of major sites.
Quarter-on-quarter, spending was up 9.91%.
The survey’s trailing 12-month total also hit a new high of $207 million.
NZ online ad spending by category (Q3, 2009)
Category: Total spend (growth over year-ago quarter)
Search & Directory: $22.36m (38.76%)
Classified: $18.11m (6.15%)
Display: $17.22m (8.6%)
IAB chairman Michael Gregg notes that : “Performance across the online advertising market was mixed”.
And certainly, the stats are not necessarily good news for traditional publishers with websites.
Easily the highest growth came in the Search & Directory category, which includes Google search and the likes of YahooXtra and Yellow.
Display - which includes banner and medallion ads - grew at single digits.
And classified was the dog, especially in the sub-category of recruitment ads, which were hardest hit by the slow down.
Mr Gregg - whose day job is sales director at TradeMe - said he'd personally seen an uptick in classified business over spring. (TradeMe's "verticals" such as Motoring, Property, Cars and Livestock are included in the IAB's classified total, but not general auction listings.)
The big question now, the IAB chairman told NBR, is whether 2009 will be the year that online (or "interactive") advertising passes that of the most vulnerable traditional media categories: magazines and radio.
The ASA’s next update of its media vs media survey (covering the calendar year 2009) is due early next year.
The IAB is confident that online advertising will seize a 10%-plus share of total advertising expenditure, said Mr Gregg.
The only question now is whether magazines and radio will fall below that mark.
The IAB is pushing a ZenithOptimedia survey that predicts a similar pattern worldwide, with the internet ad spend surging while traditional media wilts:
PricewaterhouseCoopers NZ partner Chris Perree said while the current report "iillustrates the soaring growth of online advertising in the New Zealand market", there is more growth to come, "particularly in the mobile space".
Read also:
Per head, Aussies advertisers spend twice as much online
US online ad spend suffers first decline in 7 years
Hyperfactory boss salivates over Google’s $1bn AdMob buy
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Comments and questions3
As a heavy buyer of online media for an agency, I can say the days of purchasing space in magazines is well and truly over for us.
Our clients double their online revenue when we do an online advertising campaign (yes the revenue exceeds the spend significantly).
It is a winning formula for us and our clients, not one we are keen on changing in the foreseeable future.
Someone needs to tell them we don't read or respond to online ads. The software is there. Count your sales.
It's interesting how many people say that they don't read or respond to online ads, and yet study after study shows that people do notice them - even if they think they don't. And it's undeniable that lots of people do read them and follow them - ask online advertisers who can track the returns on their online adspend direct to the returns on their sales. The measurable results for lead-oriented advertising are one of the reasons the medium is growing so fast.
Next step is that brand advertisers realise that it's a great medium for branding and engagement, and even more adspend will migrate online from other media channels.
The trends globally are hard to ignore .. even if you think you aren't influenced by online advertising yourself, other people clearly are