Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Expenditure on internet advertising in the UK surged by 13.5% in the first half of this year, when compared to last year’s January to June period.
By contrast, the wider UK advertising sector experienced year-on-year growth of just 1.4%.
Over the half year, £8.27bn was spent on advertising as a whole, with internet advertising hitting a half-year high of £2.26bn, surpassing forecasts to reach a new market share of 27%.
A quarter of a billion pounds more was spent on internet advertising in the first half of 2011 than in the same period in 2010.
The figures, which exclude mobile advertising expenditure, are collated bi-annually by the Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade body for digital advertising, in conjunction with PwC and WARC.
Online display advertising grew by 18.5% year on year, and while banners and embedded formats still dominate, video put on 100% growth thanks to a significant increase in advertisers using it to deliver brand messages. Online classifieds grew by 3%.
The top five market users of display advertising during the period were: finance (16%); FMCG (15%); entertainment/media (12%); and retail and travel/transport (10% each).
Anna Bartz, strategy manager at PwC, said: “Advertisers are benefiting from sophisticated new online advertising tools across both search and display. In difficult economic times, the transparency and measurability of online display and search advertising is helping marketers spend more wisely and get what they pay for.”
According to UKOM/Nielsen, in the year to June 2011 the UK’s active online user base had grown to 39.5m from 38.4m and during that month 26m people watched 2.3bn videos.
