The Australian digital advertising market has shrugged off any pandemic advertising woes to record 24.2% growth, the strongest since 2016, reaching $11.4bn online advertising expenditure for the 2021 financial year. The data which is drawn from the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) prepared by PwC, confirms that while the overall advertising market has rebounded, digital advertising is leading the charge and now dominates expenditure.
In the 12 months ending 30 June 2021, all sectors of online advertising experienced double-digit growth. Video advertising jumped 38.8% year on year to reach $2.4bn, general display grew 29.7% to $4.4bn, search and directories grew 22.3% to $5.1bn and classifieds grew 17.4% to $1.9bn.
The Report found that for FY21, retail was the top advertising category with 16% of all display advertising, up from 11.4% share in FY20 with expenditure coming from both traditional and ecommerce retailers. Across other categories, FMCG and technology expenditure increased their share for the period to 7.2% and 6.4% respectively for the period, while finance share remained flat. Perhaps not surprisingly given the impact of the pandemic, both automotive and travel advertising expenditure both decreased year on year.
Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia said: “The growth in digital ad investment over the last year has been extraordinary and it’s clear that marketers are confident using it as a key growth engine for their businesses across the broad range of available formats and environments.
“While the evolution of retailing has become a major driver of investment in digital advertising and we expect some shopping will return to physical stores in the future, the broad reach, deep engagement and data rich offerings will ensure retailers continue to place digital at the heart of their advertising and marketing plans,” said Le Roy.
Changing media consumption patterns, accelerated by Covid lockdowns, resulted in strong growth for connected TV spend (increasing share of all video spend from 38% to 47% year-on-year), while desktop share decreased from 36% to 32% and mobile from 26% to 21% for FY21.
Programmatic trading continued to hold strong with slight growth from 41% to 43% share of expenditure for FY21, against 41% of inventory purchased via agency and 16% direct.
June Quarter Data
For the June 2021 quarter, the online advertising market reached $3.271bn, an extraordinary 60.5% growth compared to the June 2020 quarter and 13.4% growth quarter on quarter. While some of the growth can be attributed to a COVID depressed base of advertising in the June 2020 quarter, much of it reflects a bullish level of advertising enjoyed in the June 2021 quarter when most of Australia was open for travel, hospitality, and retail spending.
