“Slowing” Australian Online Advertising Market Reaches $9.3B: IAB

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The Australian online advertising market growth has slowed, but still achieved 5.6 per cent year-on-year to reach $9.3bn expenditure for the full calendar year 2019 according to the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) compiled by PwC.

All online advertising categories showed growth through the year, while video advertising was again the growth driver in the general display category with 19.9 per cent growth year-on-year.

For the full calendar year 2019, the General Display Advertising category maintained steady segment share and growth of 5.1 per cent to reach $3.5bn for the year and Classifieds grew just 1.7 per cent to reach $1.7bn spend in 2019. Search and Directories growth slowed year-on-year to 7.7 per cent to reach $4.2bn for 2019, the category still outperformed the market overall.

47 per cent of content publishers general display inventory was bought via media agencies using either an insertion order or another non-programmatic method for the calendar year 2019. Of the balance, 29 per cent of general display advertising was bought programmatically with fixed CPM and 8 per cent via guaranteed inventory (9 per cent), while 17 per cent of all display advertising was bought directly from advertisers.

The Report also found that for calendar year 2019, content publisher’s video inventory was most regularly viewed on a desktop at 37 per cent, while viewing via connected TVs was 35 per cent and 28 per cent viewed via mobile video advertising. However for the 2^nd half of the year CTV overtook desktop as the leading device in terms of revenue.

While automotive advertising continues to lead general display expenditure at 21.5 per cent share, travel advertising has broken into the top five industries for general display expenditure for the first time at 7.5 per cent share for the year. Retail increased its use of video advertising for the year to reach 10.7 per cent share.

Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia commented “It should be no surprise to people in the industry to see a slowing of digital ad growth in 2019 as the whole market has seen media investments under pressure and the growth rate under half of what the market experienced 2018.

“We have seen a further shift in video inventory dominating the overall general display category and standard display formats contracting by 16 per cent. It was encouraging to see the travel advertiser category gain share following investment and development of travel content by a number of publishers.” said Le Roy.

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