Internet ad spending hits double digit growth

Internet advertising spending grew by over $US1 billion, or 17.2% in the first nine months of 2007, the only media category to achieve double digit growth over that time, according to TNS Media Intelligence research reported by ClickZ.

The total online ad spend for the year to September 2007 was $US8.4 billion, a record result but still a relatively small slice of the total $US108 billion global ad spend for the first nine months of the year.

Online is by far the fastest growing segment, however, its 17.2% growth dwarfing the 0.2% total sector growth.

In terms of who is doing the online advertising, non-dot-com advertisers now make up more than half of the online ad spend. A big share of the non-dot-com spend is coming from the financial services sector, where online advertising takes up an average 22% of media spending budgets.

And while blue chip advertisers are increasingly getting on board with online advertising – they now spend an average of 5.6% of their budgets on online advertising – they are still trail the industry average by 2%.