Online ad spend good - but could be better

THERE IS “bucking the trend” and then there’s evidence of an underlying market shift, and the performance of the online advertising market surely counts as the latter.

Online advertising spending in Ireland reached an estimated €132 million last year, trade body IAB Ireland and PricewaterhouseCoopers indicated this week.

“The advertising industry is on its knees and yet online is growing,” is how Justin Cullen, managing director of Core Media’s digital agency Radical bluntly assessed the state of play at an IAB/PwC presentation of the data.

As impressive as this near- 20 per cent surge is – though,

at a time when the overall advertising market has slumped an estimated 4 per cent – Cullen wonders if the industry could, collectively, be doing just that little bit better.

“I think the Irish market is way behind where it should be,” he says, comparing Core’s €152 million 2012 forecast for the Irish online ad market with the fact that the UK market is estimated at £4.8 billion (€5.8 billion) – or around 38 times bigger when a factor of 15 would normally be expected.

Broadband issues and consumer usage trends explain some of the lag. The (not always rational) devotion of brands to “legacy” advertising in traditional media as well as barriers to investment created by a lack of data in market segments such as online video could also be keeping a lid on the growth.

The size of the market may already bigger than the IAB/PwC figures suggest, however. Alan Coleman, chief executive of the agency Wolfgang Digital, believes the study hasn’t captured the industry’s “long tail”.

In addition, RTÉ did not provide any data for the second half of 2011 and so these were estimated to be flat on the first half. RTÉ has also withdrawn its membership of IAB Ireland, saving it the princely sum of €15,000 plus VAT.