PARIS: The European online advertising market grew almost 12% in 2013 to reach a new record of €27.3bn according to latest figures from IAB Europe, with the fastest growth coming in the emerging markets of Russia and Turkey.

Announcing the results of the IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study, the trade body highlighted several other firsts, including online video breaking the €1bn barrier and mobile display taking a double-digit share of total display advertising.

Mobile continued to show an extraordinary growth rate, up 128.5% on 2012 to account for 11.5% of the display market. Online video was also growing significantly, up 45.4% to €1.19bn.

"These results confirm the increasing value contributed by digital advertising to Europe's economy," said Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe. "Technology innovation is driving growth and it's important that we continue to foster our European digital businesses to enable a strong European presence on the world stage."

Growth in the three online advertising formats covered – display, search and classifieds/directories – had been "underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns", the study said.

The Display Ad market had experienced the highest growth, rising 14.9% to €9.2bn. Search, the largest format, had increased at 13% and was worth €13.4bn billion, while Classifieds/Directories market was up just 3.6% to €4.6bn.

The UK was the leading market, worth €7.4bn, outstripping the next two – Germany (€4.6bn) and France (€3.5bn).

Russia was the fastest growing territory and its 26.8% increase pushed it into fourth place in the European rankings with a market value of €1.8bn, just ahead of Italy (€1.7bn). The Netherlands (€1.3bn), Sweden (€0.9bn), Spain (€0.9bn), Norway (€0.7bn) and Denmark (€0.6bn) made up the rest of the top ten.

Daniel Knapp, Director of Advertising Research at IHS Technology and author of the research, noted that mobile advertising had come a long way. "Advancements in advertising targeting technology, standardisation of formats and improvements in measurement have allowed important progress in bridging the consumption/ad spend divide in mobile," he said.

"It is now imperative that market participants further evolve their data strategies and connect advertising experiences across different devices from mobile to desktop for sustainable market growth," he added.

Data sourced from IAB Europe; additional content by Warc staff