UK Internet marketing spend grows 41% in the first half of 2007

The Internet Advertising Bureau have released the first half year figures on Internet advertising expenditure in the UK for 2007. Once again, online advertising spend shows amazing growth, up over 41% on the first half year results for 2006, to a value of £1,334.3m.

These new figures published by the IAB are from the biannual online advertising spend study carried out in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). They show that internet advertising has continued to grow faster than any other main advertising medium, with record spend and increased market share for the period January to June 2007. Online advertising now accounts for 14.7% of overall market share, up from 10.5% for the same period in 2006.

With growth in the overall UK advertising market slowing to 3.1%, online advertising in the UK shows an amazing 41.3% growth, valued at £417.1m. It is clear that advertisers are continuing to recognise and use the online medium as a central tenet of their overall marketing strategies.

Breaking down the Internet spend by media format over the first half of 2007:

• Search advertising - paid-for, or sponsored, listings that advertisers pay for when a consumer clicks through to their site, took a 57.1% share worth some £762.3m
• Online display advertising (including banners, skyscrapers and online sponsorships) accounted for 21.5% or £287m,
• Online classified advertising was also up to a market share of 20.8%, at some £ 277.7m,
• Solus email - a new category that looks at direct email marketing/ advertising showed a 0.6% market share, worth £7.4m.

Once again, UK online advertising growth is being driven by a number of factors, including:

• high-speed broadband take-up: some 52% of UK adults have broadband at home and 90% of these have a high speed connection
• the internet is the second most consumed media (amongst Internet users), after TV
• increasing daily web use: average daily use is estimated to have risen by 158% over the last four years
• social networking and user-generated content lead to increased consumer interest and confidence
• increasingly available and sophisticated analytics tools that mean online advertising campaigns can be easily managed and measured.

Advertisers are clearly continuing to switch more of their budgets online to build their brands, interact with their customers and take advantage of new social trends and the web technologies that enable them.

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