Digital Times

The first IAB Ireland online ad spend study has been published. Online ad spend in Ireland was €97.2 million in 2009. The report was put together by IAB and PwC with a view to establishing how much Irish advertisers spent online in 2009.
The report suggests digital ad spend in Ireland is now 10% of the total ad spend (the total Irish 2009 ad spend suggested by PwC was €940 million). This means digital advertising is now worth more than outdoor, consumer magazines, and cinema.
“Online’s strong performance in this, our benchmark study, provides great confidence for the future growth of our medium,” says Suzanne McElligott, chief executive IAB Ireland (pictured).
As a bench mark study, the report only looks at three key digital media formats: search (which accounts for 46.2%), classified (27.2%) and display (26.6%).
“We estimate that our study accounts for 90% of online ad spend,” says McElligott, “At least 90% if not 95%,” confirmed Bartley O’Connor, consultant with PwC (pictured left).
29 of Ireland’s leading online publishers participated in the study, including – Boards.ie, Donedeal.ie, entertainment.ie, Google, Independent Digital, Microsoft Advertising, MyHome.ie, The Irish Times, Ticketmaster Ireland, eircom, Daft Media, RTE, TCH, Ireland.com, and Yahoo!
Sales houses and ad networks also participated and all data was provided to PwC on a confidential basis. Google did not reveal its earnings from Irish advertisers. Instead PwC, “created an independent estimate of Google’s revenue from Irish advertisers, by extrapolating from spend data provided directly by a representative sample of Google clients”.
As search accounts for 46% of online ad spend one may assume that the bulk of this (say 40%) is spent with Google. Therefore, it is a fair estimate to suggest approximately €38 million is spent by Irish advertisers with Google each year.
75% of the study’s participants predict growth or strong growth for online ad spend in 2010.