Digital advertising has managed to continue to show steady growth, despite a challenging market.

In a new report released by the IAB, prepared by PwC, online advertising was shown to have reached $2.381b for the September quarter.

This accounted for three per cent quarter on quarter growth and 6.5 per cent year on year, which according to the IAB, “bucked the overall advertising slowdown”.

When broken down into general display, classified and search & directories, each category continued to grow steadily, with search maintaining its spot as the dominant earner.

For general display, video was the main driver, growing to reach $413m for the quarter and accounting for 48 per cent of the total display spend.

The research also showed the rise of Connected TV to be impacting overall ad spend. Connected TV is now the leading device for video inventory expenditure, going from 31 per cent in the previous quarter to 38 per cent for September.

This was followed by desktop (34 per cent) and mobile (28 per cent), which each saw slightly decreased expenditure.

Programmatic continued to surge ahead, with publishers reporting 36 per cent of all digital inventory was sold programmatically in the quarter.

This, in turn, led to a decline in agency direct buys, which reduced to 47 per cent.