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Executive Summary
3 months ended 31 December 2011
Total online advertising expenditure in Australia for the three months ended 31 December 2011 was $716.25m, an increase of $28.5m (or 4%) on third-quarter 2011, and an increase of $88.5m (or 14%) on fourth-quarter 2010.
General Display advertising accounted for 24.6%, Classifieds advertising accounted for 21.7% and Search and Directories advertising accounted for the remaining 53.7% for the three months ended 31 December 2011.
Both General Display and Search and Directories advertising achieved growth compared to the prior quarter, and Classified decreased slightly from the prior quarter. All categories achieved growth compared to the prior year quarter.
General Display experienced the strongest growth, compared with third-quarter 2011, at 7%.
Within General Display, for the fourth-quarter 2011, based on submissions received, email based advertising saw a small decrease to $9.6m from $10.5m in third quarter 2011. Video based advertising also decreased from $12.0m in third quarter 2011 to $11.0m.
Within General Display, for the fourth-quarter 2011, CPM based pricing continued to be the dominant pricing method with 77% of advertising expenditure on a CPM basis, and 23% on a Direct Response basis.
The Finance, Computers & Communications and Motor Vehicles sectors continue to be the dominant industries using General Display advertising. These industries represented 40.0% of the advertising market in the fourth-quarter 2011 (40.7% in third-quarter 2011 and 44.4% in fourth-quarter 2010).
Motor Vehicles – Manufacturers was the largest subcategory which comprised 14.5% of the General Display spending for the quarter (up from 12.6% in the third-quarter 2011).
Real Estate was the leading Category for Classifieds advertising expenditure in the fourth-quarter 2011 followed by Recruitment then Automotive. This is the same order as the prior quarter.
During the quarter Search grew at a faster rate than Directories.
With the exception of Search & Directories, the December 2011 OAER does not include any estimates for non-contributors. The Search & Directories category includes an estimate of advertising expenditure received by Google, the largest company in the Search market.
Due to estimates not being included for non-survey contributors for the General Display and Classified categories, these markets can be considered to be larger than as reported in the OAER. As estimates were included in figures reported for periods prior to, and including, June 2006, growth rates in this Report for March 2007 and subsequent quarters (when compared to the figures reported for any period prior to the March 2007 quarters) can be considered to be understated.
This applies to the quarterly, 6 monthly and annual analyses.
