Online advertising has also overtaken the outdoor advertising sector for the first time, holding 5.8% of the market in the first half of 2005, as compared to the 5.1% spent on billboards and posters. Radio took 3.6% of the market.
Figures just published by the industry trade group, in association with PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre, show that online ad spend reached £490.8 million in the first half of 2005 – an increase of 62.3% on a like-for-like basis over the same period last year, and overtaking the £407.8 spent on online ads for the whole of 2003.
“These results have surpassed our expectations,” said Guy Phillipson, Chief Executive of the IAB. “At the end of 2004 the IAB predicted online would overtake outdoor by mid 2006 and we’ve beaten this target. Now the internet looks certain to be a £1 billion medium in 2005.”
The massive spending increase comes at a time when the whole ad industry has achieved year-on-year growth of only 3% in the first six months of the year.
Phillipson says the increased take up of broadband over the last 12 months has "fuelled internet consumption and in turn attracted a greater share of advertisers’ spend."
Technological innovations such as localised search, video streaming and personalisation are giving marketers greater opportunities to connect with their online customers – at the same time as people are generally becoming more selective about the media they use, said the IAB.