By Alan Coleman on 26 Apr 2013
Last week Google announced their financial figures for the first quarter of 2013. What really jumped out was an increase in revenue of 31% on the same period last year. There were 20% more paid clicks in 2013 than in 2012. These clicks were, on average, 4% cheaper for advertisers.
Online Advertising: Increase in Irish Spend
Even more interesting are figures published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) last week. According to the IAB, in 2012 online advertising spend in Ireland was up 12.3% on the previous year. The total amount spent on offline advertising in Ireland actually dropped by 6.2% over the same period.
For anyone who is already engaging in online advertising as part of their marketing strategy, these figures are very encouraging; for anyone who is not, they raise an important question: your competitors are moving online, why aren’t you?
Mobile Advertising Is So Hot Right Now
2012 was the first year that mobile ad spend was measured in Ireland. Mobile advertising made up over 6% of the €158 million spent on digital advertising in Ireland. That’s just shy of €10 million spent on mobile ads. In both the US and UK, mobile ad spend increased by over 100% in 2012.
At Wolfgang Digital we pride ourselves on recognising trends and changes in consumer behaviour, and we like nothing more than being proved right. On the 1st of February this year, our CEO Alan Coleman appeared on RTE Radio’s Morning Ireland and RTE Television’s Morning Edition to talk about mobile marketing. He spoke about a shift in consumer behaviour towards mobile devices. He predicted that 2013 is going to be a breakthrough year for mobile advertising.
The Mobile Consumer
At that time, and based on what we’d seen with our own clients, we were feeling pretty confident about that prediction. Two weeks later, GfK (one of the world’s leading research companies) released figures announcing that sales of desktop computers had dropped by a staggering 42% in the final 3 months of 2012 when compared to the same time period in 2011. In addition to this, there was a drop of 14% in the sale of laptop computers.
More recently, results of a study announced by Eircom this week show that Irish tablet ownership has doubled in the last six months. Smartphone ownership also increased by 28%; 50% of Irish people now own a smartphone. When you couple these stats with those released this week by both Google and the IAB, they only lead to one conclusion.
Alan has been walking around with a big I-told-you-so smile all week.
2013 will be a breakthrough year for mobile advertising. Don’t get caught standing still… get mobile!
Rob
