The Australian online ad market will grow at an average rate of 14.2% per year until 2014, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) chief executive Paul Fisher said today.
Speaking at the 8th Future of Digital Advertising convention in Sydney, Fisher said the growth rate is faster than the Asia Pacific region and global predictions, which stand at 13.7% and 10.6% respectively.
"The Australian market is growing at a phenomenal rate, and in this country we should see online advertising sitting alongside the other major players in the number one position by 2014, when advertising expenditure should sit at $3.8 billion," Fisher said.
He said this growth will be driven by increased consumer interest, the growth of online video, social media and a rise in internet access via mobile phones
The prediction comes as AdNews reports today that revenues in the Australian online display market have suddenly dropped off in January.
Also speaking at the conference was Big Mobile commercial director Graham Christie, who predicted that mobile advertising expenditure would increase from $34.6 million in the 2011/12 financial year, to $111.6 million in the 2014/15 financial year.
CBS Interactive marketing and insights director, Sara Borthwick, argued that data collection on consumrs would also drive online growth.
She said: "Digital media companies with a critical mass of audience data and strong listening capabilities will increasingly be able to sell audience intelligence to advertisers."
The White Agency executive creative director Darwin Tomlinson also said that the growing maturity of social media will also drive the market. He said that consumers are increasingly using social media to see what is happening in real time, which will allow businesses to create "fluid, dynamic and reactionary" communications.
Meanwhile, Roadshow Films digital marketing manager Rob Moore discussed the growth potential of gamification, the process of using an interactive game-based framework within an organisation's digital communications.
Moore said: "Over the last ten years, consumers have been building social networks, creating a world around them. Consumers give brands permission to exist in that world. But by creating an interactive gaming framework [within a brand's marketing plan], it gives consumers a reason to be within the advertisers world."
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