In 2010, online advertising in Ireland enjoyed significant growth with a 13.5pc increase in adspend. Beating industry expectations, the Irish onlinemarket was valued at €110m last year, up from €97m in 2009. Driven by advertising on social media sites and ad networks, “display spend” increased by 4.4pc to 31pc.
The survey, carried out by PricewaterhouseCooper’s, revealed that car ads were the top performing category. Advertising for property and recruitment followed closely. Online classified advertising and paid-search advertising again showed strong performances representing 25pc and 44pc of total adspend respectively. The sector benefitted from people spending more time online and more broadband connections across Ireland. There are now over 16pc more people connected to broadband than there was in 2009.
The average hours spent online each week increased from 13.2 in 2009 to 19.1 hours per week in 2010. This reflects increased viewing time of online video, streaming TV and movies, as well as the dramatic growth in social media usage.
“The growth in the Irish online audience and in their time spent consuming online media while other media are experiencing fragmenting audiences underlines the phenomenon of online's growing share of media budgets,” commented Bartley O'Connor of PricewaterhouseCooper's.