Online adspend surges in Europe

BARCELONA: Online adspend enjoyed double-digit growth in Europe last year, a trend consistent across mature and emerging markets.

Trade body IAB Europe partnered with research firm IHS Screen Digest to assess the industry's evolution in 25 countries.

In all, the two organisations reported that online ad expenditure hit €17.7bn in 2010, compared to €15.3bn during 2009 as a whole.

The web is now responsible for 18% of total advertising spend, including national highs of 29% in the UK and 28% in Denmark.

Norway, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Sweden also surpassed 20% on this metric, sliding to just 5% in Greece and 4% in Romania.

More specifically, the pace of acceleration varied from peaks of 37% in Russia and 24% in the Czech Republic to the 14% uptick yielded by Denmark and the 7% increase supplied by French brand owners.

In terms of value, the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain headed the charts, together accounting for 74% of returns.

Their Central and Eastern European counterparts currently represent 9.8% of the web's income, the IAB Europe and IHS Screen study added.

Display revenues rose by 21.3% overall, as Ireland delivered a 31% lift, Spain witnessed a 30% jump and Russia generated a 27% annual surge.

Online video, incorporated within display, saw demand roughly double in most areas, like the 125% leap recorded by Spain, posting €13m, and a 90% gain in the UK, reaching €63m.

Display also leapfrogged search as the fastest-growing format, even though the latter category registered a 15.1% improvement year on year.

Vincent Létang, senior analyst at IHS Screen Digest, said: "Back in 2009, video was the only growth engine in an otherwise flat display market."

"In 2010 by contrast, three pillars - mobile, video and social - attracted new advertising investment."

"On top of fast-growing new formats ... traditional PC-based, banner-style formats have retained their appeal thanks to innovations in design and targeting and a rise in mainstream brands using display for branding campaigns."

The UK's search sector experienced a seemingly modest 8% expansion, standing at 10% in France, a result of the relative maturity of these nations, while Hungary and Poland logged 44% and 30% increases respectively.

Search also still holds a 45% market share, ahead of display's 33%, and the 22% attributable to classifieds and directories.

In the 12 countries where mobile data was available, this channel takes between 2% and 3% of internet advertising expenditure at present.

Marketers boosted budgets here by 11.4% in Finland, measured against ratings of 3.5% for Italy, 3.1% concerning Spain, and 2.8% for both the UK and Norway.

Data sourced from IAB Europe; additional content by Warc staff, 9 June 2011

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