Internet marketing boosts advertising sector

Internet marketing is faring better than any other advertising sector in the current economic downturn, new research has shown.

According to figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), paid-for search advertising grew by more than one quarter (28 per cent) year-on-year in the six months to July 2008.

Paid search was valued at £981 million in the first half of this year, seeing its majority share (58.3 per cent) of the total online marketing sector grow by 0.5 per cent.

Online display advertising also grew over the same period, with spending rising by 16.3 per cent year-on-year.

Spending on embedded formats such as rich media and video bucked this trend with a 36.6 per cent increase in spending.

Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB UK, said: “The growth in internet advertising spend is beating all expectations as advertisers look to maximise their budgets, and take advantage of new display advertising formats such as video.

“They are also increasing their investment in paid-for search marketing because it delivers measurable returns on investment.”

Meanwhile, decreased spending across offline mediums including TV, press, outdoor and radio seems to have contributed to a downturn in the overall marketing industry, which would have fallen by 4.6 per cent without internet advertising growth being factored in.