The local Australian online advertising market has continued to grow, reaching $3.449 billion for the quarter ending 31st March 2022, an increase of 19.2 per cent on the same period in 2021 according to data from the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) prepared by PwC. You can read the report in full HERE.
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 per cent share of the general display market for the quarter, up from 3.9 per cent in Q1 2021. By contrast, retail experienced the largest decrease in share, dropping from 16.4 per cent to 13.5 per cent share of general display advertising.
All general display categories recorded growth on the previous year, with video advertising increasing 24 per cent to reach $715.1 million for the quarter, infeed/native by five per cent to reach $349.80 million, standard display by 11 per cent to reach $167.7 million and other advertising by 69 per cent to reach $21.5 million.
Spending on classifieds and search and directories grew quarter on quarter, increasing 4.3 per cent and 3.6 per cent respectively while general display advertising seasonally contracted by 15.1 per cent as it does each year. Interestingly, search and 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 one per cent on the immediate prior quarter bringing it to 42 per cent of spend, equal to the percentage of agencies buying by IO, while direct bookings remained relatively stable at 16 per cent.
