Business

Digital advertising in Ireland grows by 11% in 2023

Total of €958m was spent in sector, with spending set to grow a further 8% this year

Digital advertising in Ireland grew by 11% in 2023, a new report says, with spending set to grow a further 8% this year

Ciara O'Brien
Thu May 2 2024 - 06:00

Digital advertising in Ireland grew by 11 per cent in 2023, a new report says, with spending set to grow a further 8 per cent this year.

The IAB Ireland/PwC Online Adspend study found a total of €958 million was spent on digital advertising here last year. Among the different sectors the largest was digital display advertising, which rose 15 per cent to €589 million as advertisers spent more on video, digital audio and paid social ads. The latter accounted for €446 million, up 19 per cent year-on-year.

Video looks set to continue to be a focal point for advertisers in 2024.

“Video continues to be a dynamic driver of digital advertising in 2023, with 24 per cent growth YoY,” said Karen Preston, chair of IAB Ireland’s board and chief commercial officer of Mediahuis.

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“This video growth breaks down into 25 per cent growth in adspend for social video and 20 per cent for broadcaster/publisher video. It is not surprising that adspend participants predict that video will continue to be a top growth driver for adspend in 2024.″

Search advertising, a more mature sector of the market, rose by 4 per cent to reach a total of €314 million – around a third of the total market, according to the report. Classified advertising, meanwhile, expanded by 16 per cent. The €55 million spent on this form of advertising accounted for 6 per cent of the total digital advertising money spent last year.

“Following a lower growth rate of 4 per cent in 2022 which reflected the challenging local and global economy of that year, it is very positive to see double digit growth of 11 per cent year-on-year for the Irish digital advertising market in 2023,” said Suzanne McElligott, chief executive of IAB Ireland.

However, although the outlook remained positive for 2024 there were some challenges, with increased regulation and cookie deprecation causing concerns for the industry. The phasing out of third-party cookies has been well-flagged, with Google committing to it for Chrome in 2020, the report said.

After some delays it is due to take place by the end of this year, following other browsers such as Firefox, which blocked the third-party trackers in 2019, and Safari, which introduced intelligent tracking prevention in 2020.

Cookies have been used to help measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, and the lack of third-party cookies may make it harder to target advertising effectively. However, from a consumer point of view removing third-party cookies enhanced privacy.

Ciara O'Brien

Ciara O'Brien

Ciara O'Brien is an Irish Times business and technology journalist

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