Bellwether report shows that internet advertising is up
Rating: Internet actually the only sector doing well
The UK’s IPA (the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) in conjunction with NTC Economics has just produced its quarterly Bellwether report.
Basically it shows that after a glitch in Q4 2007, internet advertising is up and not only that, it’s the only sector actually doing much better.
Rather than give you my spin on the report right now, here’s what it actually says. I’ll look at what the report says about mobile separately.
“Internet growth revives in Q1
Having slowed to the weakest since mid-2003 in Q4, growth of internet marketing budgets recovered in Q1. Some 27 per cent of survey respondents reported that their current internet budgets were revised up while just 5 per cent reported a decline. The resulting increase was not only far stronger than seen in Q4, but meant the internet was the only category covered by the Bellwether to see an upward revision to budgets. This clearly indicates a rising share of total marketing spend accounted for by the internet.
Growth was broad-based but strongest in the auto, industrial and utilities, consumer durables, financial services and IT and computing sectors.
Led by rising search spend
To reflect the growing importance of the internet sector, the Bellwether now collects data on revisions to online search/SEO advertising spend. Data on search are only available from Q4 of last year, showing that search is displaying a similar growth trend to total internet advertising budgets, although in Q1 the
rate of growth of search was slightly above that of total internet spend. Increased search advertising spend was reported by 29 per cent of companies whereas just 6 per cent reported a decrease. All main sectors reported higher search spend on average, led by the IT and computing, auto and consumer durables sectors.
Internet advertising is included in the main media advertising category and comprises websites,
banners, pop-ups, keyword search/SEO, corporate blogs and online gaming.”
Related News:
- Bellwether figures cast little light on mobile sector
- Ofcom report shows that in a clamouring mobile market, the Irish talk more than anyone else
- Linksys survey shows that 59% of UK population who have broadband internet at home have a wireless network
- Text is bigger than Internet search
- Mobile Marketing Association launches Mobile Search Report
One Response to “Bellwether report shows that internet advertising is up”
As the Bellwether report reveals we are indeed seeing a revision in spend on direct marketing. However, we predict that online will remain relatively immune as the results are so clearly quantifiable. For example with Google, if you’re spending £1,000 a month for £5,000 return on investment, why would you cut that solid revenue stream?
Direct marketing is great, but campaigns can take a long time to put together and deploy, anything from eight to twelve weeks for example. Online / digital campaigns offer far more flexibility as online marketing is far more agile and can be adjusted, ramped up, even paused instantly. Moreover, digital campaigns can quickly be tweaked and optimised for a greater, more directly measurable effect.
One way to shore up ROI during a difficult economic period is to put the brakes on brand-building and perhaps rely on brand inertia. For example, if you’re Barclaycard, people aren’t going to forget that you’re Barclaycard during a downturn. Instead invest money into performance media such as pay per click, affiliate, email, etc. And if you’re worried about any erosion of your brand recognition you can track this using tools such as Google Trends
Comment made on July 14th, 2008 at 3:46 pmLeave a Comment