Paid search advertising beats alternatives

Paid search advertising grew to take the largest share of Australia’s online advertising spend in 2006, according to a new report by online researchers Frost & Sullivan.

Spending on paid search advertising – in which the advertiser pays to have their link appear when certain key words are searched for – increased 65.5% to $416 million in 2006, according to the report, writes The Australian newspaper.

That beat spending on online classified advertising, which took $407 million, banner advertising on $384 million, and online directories such as Sensis’s Yellow.

According to the report, the total online market will grow 30% to $1.857 billion by 2008, with paid online search likely to continue to be the fastest growing category, likely to increase 38% to $574 million.