JAKARTA: Advertising expenditure by ecommerce companies in Indonesia jumped 50% in the first nine months of the year according to new data from Nielsen.

The market researcher reported that this sector had led growth in television and print media and that their total expenditure for the first three quarters amounted to Rp 2.26 trillion ($163.9m).

It highlighted the "enormous" increases in spending at two companies in particular: online travel booking service Traveloka boosted ad spending 702% while ecommerce site Tokopedia posted nearly 17-fold growth.

Other rapidly-growing sectors, the Jakarta Globe reported, included infant formula, up 40%, and clove cigarettes, up 30%.

The single biggest spending category, however, has been government and political organisations. They spent Rp 4.58 trillion over the same nine-month period, and while this represented a 15% decline on last year, when there was an election, it was still much higher than spending on ads for individual consumer goods categories, the Jakarta Post noted.

Expenditure on the largest of these, hair care, for example, amounted to Rp 3.35 trillion.

Hellen Katerina, media director of Nielsen Indonesia, said that political advertising had been geared towards congratulatory or condolence-offering ads from government institutions, regional administrations and political bodies.

East Kalimantan province, for example, spent Rp 404.9 billion on advertising, a 79% year-on-year increase, as it received various awards from central government relating to areas such as public service performance and financial reporting.

Government spending was mostly allocated to newspapers and despite the sums spent, it has merely slowed the decline in ad revenues for this medium, which were down 6% to Rp 22.8 trillion over the period; magazine spending was down 13% to Rp 1.4 trillion.

Television remains the major medium measured by Nielsen, up 8% to Rp 62 trillion and accounting for 72% of the market, compared to newspapers' 26% and magazines' 3%.

Total advertising expenditure has risen every year for the last 15, according to Warc's Adspend Database, propelling Indonesia to 8th place in the list of highest spending ad markets.

Data sourced from Jakarta Post, Jakarta Globe; additional content by Warc staff