The Australian online search advertising market grew 23% from June 2012 to June 2013, research firm Frost & Sullivan reported recently
This growth is forecast to continue at a CAGR of 16% between 2013 and 2018.
The report noted that online search outperformed all other major online advertising segments, including online general advertising which includes sponsorships, integrated site content and e-newsletters; online classifieds and online directories.
The research firm sees that search will continue to outpace the online directories market and its proportion of the total online search and directories market is forecast to increase from 83% in 2013 to 91% in 2018.
“The volume of local searches conducted via the mobile web is growing at a much faster rate than via fixed internet connections. Search results from mobile searches are becoming more distinct to fixed internet searches, with a high proportion of mobile searches optimized for location based material. Also click-to-call features are becoming more prominent in mobile search advertising,”commented Phil Harpur, Senior Research Manager, Australia & New Zealand ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan.
As with previous years, the allocation of advertising budgets to search advertising and SEO services has increased continually over the last 12 months.
Migration from offline to online channels is a significant factor in search advertising market growth as more than 50% of advertisers divert funds from traditional media advertising toward augmenting their search advertising expenditure.