The 2010 NZ ad spend results are just out and reveal that online advertising is now the third top medium, after newspaper and television. Online advertising grew by more than 26 percent last year. Total spend on online increased from 10.5% to 12% of ad spend, despite last year online accounting for 21.5% of media consumption time. What I mean by this is, spend on the category is just under half researched consumption behaviour (see Roy Morgan stats in previous blog on online media). I had thought it might have reached 15%. Wrong! People do like to stick with the “tried and true” even in the face of stats that demonstrate otherwise!
Total ad spending increased 4.5% or $92 million for 2010 to $2.137 billion from $2.045 billion last year. Whilst still less than the $2.3 billion in 2008, it’s a welcome increase none the less. Most media sectors stayed around the same compared to the year before except television and online, which both reported big increases.
Newspapers retained their position as the number one advertising medium at $627 million but this is down from a peak of $830 million in 2005. Personally I find it astonishing that the ad spend in newspaper is holding up, given that people only consume newspaper for 3 hours a week or 5% of total media time, compared to 21.5% of time spent on the internet. I do still subscribe to The Press (Chch local daily), though I have to admit going directly online during the day to get the latest news, and too many newspapers end up unwrapped in my recycling bin!
Australia’s figures also place online advertising third in terms of share of advertising dollars so Kiwis can’t claim to be more “online savvy” than our foes over the ditch.
The question is: are you allocating enough for online in your marketing budget? I am still recommending that at least 20% of marketing budgets are allocated to this medium (higher for youth markets), including text, optimisation, Google Adwords, using Facebook much like you may use Adwords, direct mail (online), and it’s time for some sites to start allocating budget to have mobile phone versions of their site (a recent survey of web upload speed on thousands of web sites for Androids and iPhones showed over 11% of web sites tested had a version of the site specifically for smartphones. It also showed Android uploads web sites much faster than iPhones – don’t I know it. My original iPhone is terribly slow to surf with.
Certainly the sector in general is more buoyant than last year, even in spite of our recent earthquake shakes. Heartening! I’d be interested to hear how are you allocating budget to online? For some tips on online marketing options, have a look at Alexanders’ online marketing options.
