IAB: Online ad revenue flat for Q1, but sees year-on-year growth

Tim Burrowes

May 10, 2010 1:28

The Australian online ad market remained flat in the first quarter of the year compared to the last three months of 2009, with display advertising seeing its customary dip in expenditure during the quieter post-Christmas period.

Year on year however, overall online ad spend was up 17 per cent.

Online spend for the March quarter totalled $512.5m, according to Interactive Advertising Bureau’s latest Online Advertising Expenditure Report compiled by PricewaterhouseCooper.

General display advertising was $126m, down 11 per cent on the prior quarter, but up 15 per cent on the first quarter of last year.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

Topics

Interactive Advertising Bureau

4 COMMENTS

Not Amused - The Original 'Amused' 10 May 10

Is the long tail included in this report?

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Paul Fisher 10 May 10

Interesting headline and body of the story when online advertising is up 17% year on year. Due to the seasonality of buying online advertising, it is just not apples with apples to compare Q1 to Q4, or any Qtr to a previous qtr other than the same qtr the previous year.
In a 12 month period when the total Australian advertsing market fell $1.1billion, the real story here is that marketers and their agencies continued to invest in online and in fact grew their investment in online, and continue to do so.
Display is up 15% on the same period last year. There’s nothing ‘flat’ or in ‘decline’ about these rates of growth.

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Camille Alarcon 11 May 10

Hi Paul – some fair points. The story has now been updated to reflect that.

Cheers,

Camille – Mumbrella

Paul Fisher 11 May 10

Thanks Camille.

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