Advanced Television

Europe’s online ad market tops €20bn

May 30, 2012

Europe’s online advertising market grew 14.5 per cent year-on-year to a market value of €20.9 billion. By comparison the overall European advertising market – excluding online – grew at just 0.8 per cent in the same time period.

IAB Europe’s annual AdEx Benchmark survey shows that 1 in 5 advertising Euros in Europe is now spent online.

Individual market growth ranged from 55.5 per cent in Russia and 46 per cent in Serbia, to 5.5 per cent in Norway and 4.6 per cent in Romania. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) markets have increased their share of the total from 10.1 per cent in 2010 to 11.8 per cent last year. Russia is now the sixth biggest market with a value of €1.12 billion, buoyed particularly by a surging search market. Together the top five markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands) account for almost 67.9 per cent of the total online advertising market, down slightly from 69.2 per cent in 2011.

Head of Advertising Research at IHS Screen Digest and author of the research, Daniel Knapp explains, “Advertising markets are in general very susceptible to changes in the macroeconomic environment – in other words, in an economy where we have the European sovereign debt crisis, high unemployment and cutbacks in consumer spending, we would expect advertising spend to suffer disproportionately as it did on most media in 2011. However, online enjoys a number of unique attributes that have protected it from this effect.

Firstly, it’s a question of formats – advertisers increasingly recognise online as a branding medium; video commands a significant and growing share of spend, and search continues to deliver sound and measurable results. Secondly, the explosion of ‘big data’ has delivered enhanced targeting capabilities improving monetisation of publishers’ inventory. Thirdly, there is a long term trend for advertisers to shift ad budgets from mature to emerging markets, which is fuelling their online economy. An expanding broadband infrastructure adds to the attractiveness of those markets.”

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