Digital advertising spend rose to €158m in Ireland in 2012 including €9.9m for mobile

"The 2012 IAB PwC Adspend Study records a like for like growth of 12.3% year on year for the Irish market. This double-digit growth for digital is in strong contrast to the overall 6.2% decrease in adspend on other media as tracked by Nielsen for the same period.
Digital Advertising Formats (Excluding Mobile)
Paid-for-Search advertising has grown by 24% year on year with a 45% share of online adspend at €66.6m. The dominant performance of the Search format reflects the pattern of spend across Europe.
Display advertising holds a 34% share with a spend of €50.6m and an increase of €2.8m on 2011. Display is the format beloved by brands. The growth in the display format can be attributed to the following factors: increased spend on video advertising, and growth in spend on new innovative digital formats such as Home Page Takeovers. Display advertising on social media sites has grown by 9% yoy reaching €6.3m for 2012 in Ireland.
Classified advertising online grew by 13% in 2012 and holds a 20% share of online adspend at €29m.
FMCG is the top advertiser category in Display Spend
FMCG advertisers are the top spending category in online display spend with a category share of 15% of total display spend. Finance is in second position at 12%, followed by Telcos at 11%.
Property/Recruitment and Auto continue to dominate Classified adspend.
The top-spending category for classified advertising in 2012 is Auto at 36% followed closely by Property/Recruitment in second place at 34%. These 2 categories continue to hold the top spending positions of the classified format.
Irish Mobile Adspend
In 2012 mobile adspend reached €9.9m, with Display and SMS/MMS advertising accounting for 82% of this revenue and Mobile Search holding an 18% share. FMCG is the top spending category on Mobile Display/SMS/MMS.
Total Digital Adspend including mobile
The digital channel has broken the €150m milestone in 2012 with a total digital adspend including mobile of €158m.
Key Drivers for growth:
1) Growth of digital consumption
Comscore records a 10% growth in unique visits in 2012 up to 2.6m
Average hours online per person per week is 19.5 (Comscore)
Smartphone Penetration is 43%, with 61% of users going online via smartphones every day (Google: Our Mobile Planet Study 2012)
2) Irish Marketers growing online budget
80% of Medium/Large Businesses are committed to growing their digital budget in 2013 (Alternatives Marketing Watch Survey Dec 2012)"

Source:  Press release from IAB Ireland, 18th April 2013