Member News: Online ad spend
Article Date: 19th Apr 2007
Like any teenager who has been through a traumatic early childhood, sometimes the digital marketing industry can be a bit insecure, with a tendency to dwell on the negative rather than recognise its achievements. But even insecure teenagers must, from time to time, allow themselves a momentary flush of pride.
For digital marketing, now is one of those moments, as the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers release figures showing that, for the first time, more than £2bn has been spent on online advertising in the UK in the space of a year.
To mark this milestone, NMA has identified some of the digital champions who have helped online become a bigger ad medium than national newspapers. It's not a definitive list, but everyone on it has made a worthy contribution, as an advertiser, a creative or in buying and selling media space. NMA asked each what they thought was behind the £2bn breakthrough and where the industry was heading.—Jennifer Whitehead
Luke Taylor comments
Luke Taylor
CEO, LBi
If Mark Cridge represents the creative side of digital advertising, Luke Taylor stands as the champion of the full-service agency. He started in online in 1993, at the Internet Bookshop, and founded Oyster Partners two years later. Various mergers have left Taylor hunting for an office to house the 500 LBi staff members in one location.
It's particularly satisfactory that a top-class UK infrastructure allows us to set the global market for online advertising. It's not surprising that search continues to drive the growth. However, it's the 35% increase in display advertising, driven by new rich-media video formats, that's especially comforting.
Information-oriented advertising, listings, results and so on will continue to be a hugely significant and valuable element to any client marketing strategy. But things will get truly interesting when the proportion of advertising monies allocated to online matches the time consumers spend with this medium.
We still have a long way to go. Budgets still lag behind consumer consumption and behaviour. We’re excited about a future in which this rebalances itself and experience-led digital communications is allowed to reach its full potential.
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