Member Article

Measurable online advertising becomes increasingly popular

Affiliate marketing and lead generation deals are becoming increasingly popular among advertisers, research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) suggests.

In 2012, advertisers spent over £800m on online performance marketing (OPM) activities, generating £9nn in sales.

Around 100 million direct transactions contributed to the spend, as IAB say OPM now accounts for around 5-5% of all UK e-commerce retail sales.

The finance sector is the biggest spender, accounting for 45% of OPM expenditure in 2012, largely driven by price comparison sites. FMCG also made considerable spend on digital display advertising.

Retailers account for 20% of expenditure, predominantly through clothing and accessories and electrical and computing advertisers.

Telecoms and media companies will typically allocate more of their entire online marketing budgets to OPM, the study suggested.

IAB’s research, conducted by PwC, estimates that OPM grew by 57% between 2008-2012, and suppliers of OPM services and technology estimate 25% revenue growth in the coming year.

Anna Bartz, Senior Manager at PwC, says: “Economically challenging times have seen marketing budgets squeezed and greater evidence required of return on investment.

“As a result, we expect that the attractiveness of paying for advertising based on an extremely measurable and specific consumer action will see more advertisers using Online Performance Marketing as a key channel for driving sales.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .