MADRID: Advertising expenditure in digital media now accounts for 21% of all adspend in Spain where it has consolidated its second place behind television, new data has revealed.

IAB Spain, the trade body, said that investment in digital advertising during 2013 had reached €878.4 million, of which by far the greatest proportion (94.8%) went on laptop and desktop advertising.

The remaining share was divided between mobile advertising (4.5%) and digital signage (0.7%).

Within the deskop/laptop segment, spending was down 3.1% on 2012 to €832.5 million. And the split between display and search was moving in favour of the latter and now stood at 40:60.

The three sectors investing most heavily in display remained automotive, telecommunications and finance, which together accounted for 34% of total investment, although telecoms was noted to be in long-term decline.

Mobile spending was growing fast, up 47.4% to €39.9 million and here display advertising was dominant, taking 70% of media investment.

Automotive and telecommunications again featured prominently among investors in mobile, taking 42% of the total between them, with beauty and hygiene a distant third on 4.9%.

Even though overall spending had not increased, Belén Acebes, IAB Spain Director of Marketing and Research, took a positive from the fact that digital expenditure was becoming increasingly important.

She also highlighted the first figures for programmatic buying which she said now accounted for 15.7% of all digital spending.

Her colleague Antonio Traugott, CEO of IAB Spain, drew attention to digital's relatively stable performance compared to the decline of other media. Given the performances of mobile and digital signage he expected that 2014 would see the industry "progressively moving away from a flat line and into moderate growth".

Data sourced from IAB Spain; additional content by Warc staff