Online ad spend races ahead

The online advertising spend in the UK, Spain, Italy and France last year was greater than the advertising spend for the whole of Europe from the previous year, new data reveals. Figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe reveal that online advertising spend hit Euros 5,048bn (£3,453bn) last year across the four countries, with the UK accounting for Euros 3,101bn (£2,121bn).
The UK spend almost doubled that of France with a Euros 1,157bn (£792.52m) spend. Italy spent Euros 480m (£328.37) while Spain spent Euros 311m (£212.76m). Paid-for search adverting accounted for the largest spend at 49%, display and classifed advertising accounted for 30% and 20% respectively and email marketing got just 1.5% of the spend.
It is the first year that IAB Europe has provided comparable data across Europe.
President of IAB Europe Alain Heureux says: “We have shown that by uniting the data from across the continent we can produce information that highlights the importance of online advertising.”
IAB Europe will present further figures at the Interact Congress in Brussels in June, with data published from countries including Germany and the Netherlands.
IAB Europe is a group of 15 IAB associations and think-tanks, which represents more than 2,000 companies and more than 30,000 individual members.