The local Australian online advertising market has continued to grow, reaching $3.449bn for the quarter ending 31st March 2022, an increase of 19.2% on the same period in 2021 according to data from the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) prepared by PwC.
Within the quarter, the most significant shift in spending was unsurprisingly around the Federal Election, resulting in Government being elevated to the number one advertiser category, representing 13.5% share of the general display market for the quarter, up from 3.9% in Q1 2021. By contrast, retail experienced the largest decrease in share, dropping from 16.4% to 13.5% share of general display advertising.
All general display categories recorded growth on the previous year, with video advertising increasing 24% to reach $715.1m for the quarter, infeed/native by 5% to reach $349.80m, standard display by 11% to reach $167.7m and other advertising by 69% to reach $21.5m.
Spending on classifieds and search & directories grew quarter on quarter, increasing 4.3% and 3.6% respectively while general display advertising seasonally contracted by 15.1% as it does each year. Interestingly, search & directory spend in the quarter seized share from general display advertising as the recovery of travel accelerates.
Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia commented: “The digital ad market saw solid investment growth for the March quarter compared to the previous year with the standard slight seasonal decline from the December quarter. The make-up of the top advertiser categories was greatly disrupted by significant ad spend from the political parties and independents early into the campaign for the Federal Election.”
The share of content publishers inventory bought programmatically grew by 1% on the immediate prior quarter bringing it to 42% of spend, equal to the percentage of agencies buying by IO, while direct bookings remained relatively stable at 16%.
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About the Interactive Advertising Bureau
As an independent industry association with more than 150 members in Australia and nearly 9,000 globally spanning media owners, publishers, technology companies, agencies and advertisers, IAB works to align industry stakeholders to develop solutions for the issues faced by the market and develop standards that are integral to the operation of digital advertising.
IAB Australia also works closely with other industry associations including MFA and AANA to help shape the rules of play around measurement, Australian Digital Ad Practices, mentorship, global tech and policy work, Tech Lab standards, standardising terminology and supporting the broad media and marketing community.