Irish online spend 'lagging behind UK'

Online advertising in Ireland is set to grow in 2008, but still significantly lags the UK in terms of annual spend, according to a report published today.

In the UK, more than 12% of marketing media budgets is spent on online advertising campaigns while only 2.5% of Irish marketing media budgets were spend online in 2007, estimated at €35m, according to a study by iReach.

As internet penetration continues to grow in Ireland, accelerated by wide scale availability of mobile broadband, Irish subscribers now have the widest range of access methods to the internet over many European markets, including the UK.

Last year iReach estimated online advertising spend would reach €35m, accounting for just 2.5% of all advertising spend in Ireland during 2007.

While overall advertising budgets continue to grow in Ireland and will exceed €1.5bn for the first time in 2008, the online proportional share of this budget is growing fast also.

However the pace of this growth is significantly slower than the UK.

"Over 1.4 million people in Ireland now have access to the Internet, so perceptions of Ireland being switched off is no longer reflective of the true state of the market," said iReach managing director Oisín Byrne.

"Access to the internet through fixed line and mobile broadband will exceed dial-up in 2007, as step change which happened in the UK during 2006."

Online advertising spend in Ireland across all channels with grow to over 3.6% of total advertising media spend in 2008 totalling €55m, still lagging the UK market by a significant margin.