David Murphy, group head of digital solutions, The Irish Times Group, likens digital advertising to his other passion in life, running.
“Digital advertising, like running, has huge benefits; both are relatively easy to get started but require a lot of work and patience to achieve your goals,” says Murphy.
“I love the constantly evolving nature of digital advertising and it keeps me interested, but it means you have to continually learn.”
Digital is now Ireland’s leading advertising market in terms of value. Digital advertising reached a spend of €1.06bn in 2024, up 11 per cent year on year, and continues to rise annually. This is the first time that Ireland’s annual spend on digital advertising exceeded €1bn.
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“Last year, there was more money spent on digital video than on TV in Ireland,” says Murphy. When it comes to total advertising spend, “more than 60 per cent of that spend now goes toward digital. And of that, the majority of spend is going into display.”
Online display advertising grew by 13 per cent in 2024, while branded storytelling (or native articles) grew by 18 per cent.
It is a highly saturated marketplace, with the average person exposed to somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 advertising messages per week, according to estimates. However, Murphy says, “One of the biggest benefits of digital advertising is its accountability and its measurement; having a few key metrics in place and in mind can help your campaigns go better.”
Space to breathe
The secret sauce, according to Murphy, is giving ads space to breathe, rather than overselling and overlapping too many ads on one article. We’ve all tried to read an article on our phones only to give up, frustrated with trying to click through all the pop-ups that appear.
“We put enough editorial content in between the ads to make sure that things aren’t cluttered and overloaded,” he says. “And we’ve been quite invested in proving how effective this is.”
It’s a brave move to stand firm when the simple equation of ‘more ad units equals more revenue’ seems incontrovertible. But the results are speaking for themselves.
“We really put ourselves in the slow media space,” he says. “Slow media essentially means the people are carefully consuming the content, and they’re scrolling slower to take the time to digest it.”
The proof is in the metrics, with a 42 per cent increase in active attention time recorded.
“Marketers are always looking for leading indicators and signals that can help forecast business outcomes, and attention is one of the earliest indicators that can predict. If people are paying attention to your ad, awareness and recall increases, which in turn increases sales and revenue.”
Cutting through the noise
Gavin McAuliffe, group head of Content Studio reiterates that people are exposed to a barrage of advertising messages and content, from the first thing in morning phone scroll to listening to a podcast on the bus and onwards throughout the day. “Media punctuates our entire day and within that so do all the commercial messages we are exposed to.
“What that means for us is that, as a publisher, we have two big jobs to do. In terms of our audience, we have to be with them at every stage of that media day, and in terms of delivering for advertising clients, we have to cut through all that noise.”
He explains how branded content – “that’s co-created or funded by a brand, where storytelling is used to weave in brand values and to deliver some information in a really useful way to the audience” – is a powerful way to cut through that noise.
Why does Content Studio’s branded content work so well for advertisers? McAuliffe attributes this to a number of factors. “The environment in which this content appears is absolutely key,” he says. It’s also down to the creative flexibility across multiple formats: “What does it look like in digital, print, video, still photography, as an infographic, as a piece of audio, on social?”
Paired with display ads the results are impactful. “People spend longer with branded content and people remember it for longer. In fact, branded content lifts brand recall by 59 per cent,” McAuliffe says. “And it’s not a passive experience. It’s a lean in experience.”
Audience reaction
Murphy and McAuliffe were speaking at a Lunch and Learn event hosted by The Irish Times Group Media Solutions at The Irish Times offices in Dublin on Thursday, August 28th. The packed event was attended by advertising clients who were enthused about the wealth of information and insights provided on the day.
Rebecca McGetrick, marketing executive with Sherry FitzGerald, says her “key takeaway” is the “more pared back approach ... giving people time to actually see the ad and not be completely bombarded”.
“It made me think about how can we do this in the future, within Sherry FitzGerald as well, because we really don’t want to over saturate people’s timelines and feeds with ads. It’s definitely something we have to think about it within the department.”
Magdalena Konczyk of Helvetic Clinics emphasises the shift from traditional search optimisation to diverse strategies.
“The way that people search for your business online now, it’s definitely changing,” she says, pointing to the increasing use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT disrupting the SEO landscape. “It’s just not enough to pay for search optimisation on Google any more - you need to create different content and different strategies in advertising.”
Melinda Szabo-Havas, marketing executive, Fire, echoes the sentiments, saying her company is exploring PR and branded content strategies to enhance their brand and digital trust, hoping to increase traffic and conversions.
“We see the SEO strategy and the content marketing strategy we do taking effect, and we see the visibility coming through, but not the traffic and not the clicks, and we see those continuously declining because of the AI search results,” she says. Szabo-Havas left with a new insight into how branded content could help “build a brand and generate more trust digitally, which will eventually result in, hopefully, the uptake of clickthrough as well and convert into traffic.”
Trust is a theme that resonated throughout the event. Rachel Costello, head of media solutions at The Irish Times Group, who hosted the Lunch & Learn, underlines the importance of trust, building relationships and coming together in person to share ideas as the impact of big tech and AI “take over more of our talent and our time”.
“Trust is so important, especially in the times that we live. The Irish Times Group, run by a trust – with no shareholders and profits reinvested in the company – is guaranteed editorial independence. That gives us the space and the licence to be able to continue to deliver journalism that is truthful and factual and instils trust in our audiences.”
For more information about advertising with The Irish Times Group visit irishtimes.com/about-us/advertise.
