Media&Marketing:It took Irish advertising agencies a while to catch on to the internet, but now they're piling in. These days, all the big Irish websites are stuffed with online display ads and the Institute of Advertising Practitioners (IAPI) calculates that the spend on website display ads - banners, buttons etc - was up 90 per cent in the first half.
Sales Online expects that the online spend in the Republic to total €75 million by year end, up 50 per cent on 2006, with more growth to come in 2008.
Driving the growth is the adoption of broadband by most internet users.
A new report by online consultancy Amas reveals that broadband subscriptions showed the highest quarterly growth levels in the first quarter of 2007 since broadband was launched in the Republic five years ago.
Total subscribers stood at 602,000 at the end of March, an impressive 84,000 gain on the previous quarter. Broadband subscription levels have practically doubled within a year.
The Sales Online calculation of a €75 million annual spend in online media includes classified sites (jobs, property, cars) as well as search engines. So the figure is obviously an educated guess as only Google know how much they extract from Irish advertisers. Simon Ferguson, managing director of Sales Online, believes that Google's income from the Irish market will exceed €20 million this year.
Google recently extended its advertising network to mobile phones, so that any website that can be reached through a mobile web browser will be able to take part in its advertising network.
Such is its dominance in the search market that Google has been flexing its muscles with the ad agencies.
They were recently informed that Google will no longer be paying them any commission for advertising they book on behalf of clients.
Giving the two fingers to agencies has never worked for any other media in the Republic, but the "do no evil" Americans obviously think that they know better than the locals. Among the brand advertisers, the online spend is mostly in the financial, telecom and computer sectors.
According to IAPI, the top 10 online advertisers from January to July 2007 were Vodafone (€540,000); MBNA (€450,000); AIB (€424,000); O2 (€391,000); Bank of Ireland (€292,000); Sky (€290,000); Permanent TSB (€258,000); Eirborne Text Promotions (€217,000); Dell (€216,000) and Eircom (€210,000).
So far, grocery brands haven't made the move online, due to the perception that housewives are more likely to be watching telly than logging on.
However, Simon Ferguson expects that retail, entertainment and consumer brands, including beverages, will be the biggest growth sectors online over the next three years. But while more advertising money is migrating online, one issue which is still a bugbear for online advertisers is the lack of uniform audience measurement on websites.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), the independent organisation that certifies circulation figures for newspapers and magazines, has a new division that audits the number of unique users and page impressions on websites. Many of the leading Irish websites have signed up for this service, but smaller players say that they can't afford the service, which they claim is more expensive.
Ferguson says: "A cost-effective independent auditing programme is required for the 100-plus websites who offer advertising in the Republic.
"The independent measurement of results should be available online and be available at least weekly or monthly." Different websites are audited at different times and the latest available report from ABC shows that RTÉ has the most users, followed by Ireland.com, the website of The Irish Times.
Competition between the top two Irish websites is keen and Paul Farrell, group marketing director of The Irish Times, believes that RTÉ operates with an unfair advantage.
He said: "RTÉ.ie is quite clearly one of the top websites in the country and is commanding a significant amount of advertising and commercial revenues.
"However, the key drivers of this revenue come from the content that has already been paid for or highly subsidised by the taxpayer. That RTÉ can present this content in a digital format and drive additional commercial revenues from it strikes me as unfair competition."
The most popular Irish websites (with number of unique users) are:
RTÉ.ie, 1.56 million;
Ireland.com, 1.18 million;
Eircom.net, 1.03 million;
Independent.ie, 956,000;
Daft.ie, 760,000;
Carzone.ie, 470,000;
Irishjobs.ie, 414,000;
Buyandsell.ie, 349,000;
My Home.ie, 339,000.
Branching out
Image Publications and Harmonia are used to competing against each other in the women's magazine sector, but now the competition has moved to greener pastures.
Image Publications' managing director, Richard Power, is believed to be close to completing the purchase of the bi-monthly garden magazine Garden Heaven, edited by celebrity gardener Dermot O'Neill, from Byers Media while Harmonia, run by Norah Casey, has launched a new monthly title, Diarmuid Gavin's Garden Designs.
With a print run of 55,000, the magazine is on sale in the Republic and the UK.
