As usual, there may 2 ways to read the SMH article below - I guess the key is that the current numbers meet analyts' expectations so I see it as a pretty positive one.
THE growth in online advertising has halved over the past year, but continues to outpace that of traditional media platforms as advertisers shift from print to the internet.
Spending on internet advertising in Australia was up 27 per cent in the year to June, cracking the $1.5 billion mark for the first time, according to data compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
This is a sharp drop from the 54 per cent-plus growth rates reached over the past four years, with the internet maturing and a slowing economy weighing on company spending. However, it matched the expectations of analysts, who said it was far ahead of what executives in the rest of the media industry can expect.
Goldman Sachs last month predicted 26.3 per cent growth for the online market in 2007-08, compared with just 2.8 per cent growth in metropolitan newspaper advertisements and 5 per cent on free-to-air television.
The online advertising expenditure report was commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents online companies including Google, News Digital Media, ninemsn, Sensis, Yahoo!7 and the digital arm of Fairfax Media, publisher of the Herald.
Search sites and directories posted the biggest increase, with 34 per cent growth over the year, followed by 23 per cent growth in general display ads.
The report is the latest evidence of advertising dollars moving online. According to the ANZ, the number of job ads on the internet was up 8.3 per cent in June from a year earlier, compared with a 17.9 per cent decline in newspaper job ads.
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