Mobile ad spend in Ireland jumps 63% to €231m

Online advertising spend in Ireland rose 31 per cent last year to a record €445 million with mobile continuing to outstrip desktop spend.

The latest IAB/PwC online ad spend study shows that with more consumers accessing the internet via mobile devices, advertisers are increasingly ditching the desktop.

Mobile ad spend reached €231 million in 2016, up 63 per cent versus the previous year and equivalent to 51 per cent of all advertising spend.

Overall, display advertising had the highest growth rate among digital ad formats in Ireland last year due to the impact of Facebook

The main areas of growth in ad spending came from search, native, social media and video advertising, the survey reveals.

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Overall, display advertising had the highest growth rate among digital ad formats in Ireland last year due to the impact of Facebook.

Spending on digital advertising rose 44 per cent to €197 million last year. Within this category, spending on social media jumped 133 per cent from €49 million in 2015 to €114 million. Video advertising jumped 91 per cent to a record €47 million, while native advertising increased 82 per cent to €82 million from €45 million a year earlier.

Paid-for-search advertising rose 25 per cent to €219 million, while classified ad spend totalled €29 million, equivalent to just 6 per cent of all online spending.

Finance was the top spending category in display advertising with an 18 per cent share

Programmatic trading using automated processes amounted to 33 per cent of display ad spend, the report shows.

Finance was the top spending category in display advertising with an 18 per cent share. Retail was the second biggest spending category with a 14 per cent share.

Online advertising spend as a whole is forecast to grow by 16.5 per cent per year between 2015 and 2020, according to the report.