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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Self-Publishing   >   Sales   >   It’s not all gloom – Internet advertising holds up

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It’s not all gloom – Internet advertising holds up

By on October 7, 2008

Latest research from the Internet Advertising Bureau shows that online advertising grew 21% in the first half of 2008.

Total online adspend in H1 2008 was £1,682.5 million, up from £1.3 billion in H1 2007.  The total ad spend in the UK for that period was £8.98 billion, down 0.7%, and would have been down 4.6% if not for the substantial growth in online.

Online, with a share of spend of 18.7%, is now hard on the hills of press display advertising (19.3%) and television (21.7%) and may well become the second largest ad sector by the end of the year.

Other highlights:

  • Search continues to perform well, up 28% to £981 million, taking a total of 58.3% of all online advertising
  • Display advertising was up 36.6% to £333.8, the only display medium to be growing. The IAB doesn’t distinguish between static banners and video ads, but everyone I talk to in the industry says that video is the sector of online advertising where CPMs are holding up.
  • Classified advertising (particularly recruitment, property, cars and small ads) rose 30.2% to £361 million, taking market share from newspapers in particular.

The IAB makes many positive noises about the growth of the advertising market but doesn’t once mention the impact of the current financial crisis on online budgets. By feeling is that online will weather the downturn better than every other medium, but will still feel the pinch. Expect H1 2009 online spend to show much less growth – and possibly be flat.

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com