20% of Irish marketers now spend most of their marketing budgets online according to the 2012 Irish Digital Marketing Sentiment Survey. This is hardly surprising given an Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) report showing that 65% of Europeans are now active online.
Mediascope Europe, the industry standard European media consumption study first launched in 2003 found that 426.9 million Europeans across 28 countries are now online for an average of 14.8 hours each week. Other findings from the report show that 37% are using more than one device to access the web, 96% use the internet for research and 86% shop online. Europeans are now watching TV and surfing the web simultaneously and the report also found that 40% of internet users agree that the way a brand communicates online is important. In a six month period Europeans spent €188 billion buying goods and services online – an average of €544 per European online shopper.
The survey was conducted using a combination of online, telephone and face-to-face methodologies totalling over 50,000 interviews across 28 markets.
Given these results it is hardly surprising that a separate survey published by AMAS in partnership with the Marketing Institute of Ireland shows Irish marketers increasing their online budgets. The 2012 Irish Digital Marketing Sentiment Survey shows that one in five Irish marketers now spend more than half its total budget online. 58% of marketers say online marketing offers greater return on investment than other formats. Other findings from the report include:
- 58% of marketers say online marketing offers greater return on investment than other formats
- Top reasons for using it are customer engagement (74%), value for money (63%) and optimising reach (57%)
- The most popular formats are email campaigns (67%), social networking / blogs (63%) and search engine optimisation (57%)
- 70% of the companies used Facebook. Twitter and LinkedIn were both at 61%, and 44% used YouTube – all four of these channels showed an increase on last year’s survey
The survey was conducted among 347 and more than two-thirds of the respondents had budgetary responsibility for their business’s marketing functions.
