Australian Digital Advertising Reaches $11bn Milestone

The Australian digital advertising market has shrugged off any pandemic advertising woes to record 24.2 per cent growth, the strongest since 2016, reaching $11.4bn online advertising expenditure for the 2021 financial year.

The data, which is drawn from the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) and prepared by PwC, confirms that while the overall advertising market has rebounded, digital advertising is leading the charge and now dominates expenditure.

In the 12 months ending 30 June 2021, all sectors of online advertising experienced double-digit growth. Video advertising jumped 38.8 per cent year on year to reach $2.4bn, general display grew 29.7 per cent to $4.4bn, search and directories grew 22.3 per cent to $5.1bn and classifieds grew 17.4 per cent to $1.9bn.

The report found that for FY21, retail was the top advertising category with 16 per cent of all display advertising, up from 11.4 per cent share in FY20 with expenditure coming from both traditional and ecommerce retailers. Across other categories, FMCG and technology expenditure increased their share for the period to 7.2 per cent and 6.4 per cent respectively for the period, while finance share remained flat. Perhaps not surprisingly given the impact of the pandemic, both automotive and travel advertising expenditure both decreased year on year.

Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia commented: “The growth in digital ad investment over the last year has been extraordinary and it’s clear that marketers are confident using it as a key growth engine for their businesses across the broad range of available formats and environments.

“While the evolution of retailing has become a major driver of investment in digital advertising and we expect some shopping will return to physical stores in the future, the broad reach, deep engagement and data rich offerings will ensure retailers continue to place digital at the heart of their advertising and marketing plans,” said Le Roy.

Changing media consumption patterns, accelerated by COVID lockdowns, resulted in strong growth for connected TV spend (increasing share of all video spend from 38 per cent to 47 per cent year-on-year), while desktop share decreased from 36 per cent to 32 per cent and mobile from 26 per cent to 21 per cent for FY21.

Programmatic trading continued to hold strong with slight growth from 41 per cent to 43 per cent share of expenditure for FY21, against 41 per cent of inventory purchased via agency and 16 per cent direct.

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