Mobile plays starring role in Australian online industry growth

Total online ad spend in Australia reached $3.3 billion in 2012, exceeding the $3.04 billion forecast put forward by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The star of the year was mobile advertising, growing 220% to $86.2 million during the 12 months to December, 2012, although this rate of growth is expected to level out.

"While mobile is currently experiencing a surge, we expect it will settle onto strong and sustained growth rates, just as general online advertising expenditure did in 2000 after an extraordinary period of growth," said IAB director of research Gai Le Roy.

Mobile advertising, a subset of general display and search expenditure, achieved growth rates "reminiscent of the early days of online advertising". Total expenditure for the fourth quarter of 2012 was $33.8 million, a growth of 55% over Q3.

According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers/IAB figures, 58% of mobile advertising for Q4 2012 was allocated to smartphones and 42% to tablets. Over half (56%) of mobile advertising was general display while 44% was search.

In other research, this time from Marin Software, Australia was found to be leading the way globally in terms of ad clicks from mobile devices.

The "Mobile Search Advertising Around the Globe" report, released earlier this month, found that Australian marketers allocate the highest percentage of budget (8%) on tablet advertising than any other country. Australia also has the second highest allocation of budget to smartphones (8.8%), second only to Singapore (12.3%) and level with Japan (8.8%).

Tags: Australia, mcommerce, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, mobile trends, research