Australian digital advertising continues to outpace overall ad market with retail advertising surging

 The Australian digital advertising market has continued its strong growth trend, to reach $2,883m for the March quarter 2021, up 25.8% year on year. The data which is drawn from the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) prepared by PwC, shows that retail advertising is surging and that classified advertising is rebounding reflecting the overall health of the Australian economy and increasing consumer confidence.

Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia commented: “Digital advertising continues apace and we’re seeing a diversification of that spend into a broader range of opportunities across different digital offerings.  There’s no doubt the Australian market is bouncing back but there’s still plenty of room for further growth, with expectations that as borders re open and supply chains improve, both the travel and automotive categories will increase the investment in digital advertising.”

All categories reported double digital growth on the March quarter 2020, with search and directories increasing 26.5% general display increasing by 28.9% and classifieds up 18.5%.

While retail advertising has held a record share of display advertising investment for the last two quarters, it has continued to grow, now representing 16.4% of display investment and leading video advertising investment.  Finance advertising share also increased, and real estate reached the top five industry sector. Travel advertising has begun its recovery thanks to the boom in domestic tourism, with both it, and automotive advertising slightly up from preceding quarters.

Total video advertising expenditure fell slightly to $572m in the March quarter following a record spend of $645m in the immediately preceding December 2020 quarter.  Meanwhile programmatic trading of content publishers video inventory increased in the March quarter, peaking at 61% of the total expenditure, versus 34% bought through agencies.