Brits ‘clicked on more internet ads last year’

Research for Internet Advertising, a new Market Assessment from market intelligence provider Key Note, also reveals that  while only 9.2% of users had responded to classified advertisements on the Internet during the previous 12 months. 

Indeed, the proportion of respondents who had actually responded to a classified advertisement on the Internet remained little changed between the two surveys.

This said, increases were recorded in many of the measures of Internet advertising between the 2008 and 2009 surveys. 

For example, 46.8% of users in 2009 indicated that they had visited an Internet site that included classified advertising, compared with 41% of users in 2008. 

The research found that the socio-demographic groups that were most likely to have actually responded to classified advertisements on the Internet were men, those aged 20 to 24 years, those in the C2 social grade, those living in households with five or more members and those living in households with children up to 9 years old. 

In the first half of 2009, the UK became the first major economy in which advertisers spent more on Internet advertising than on television advertising, with a record £1.75bn online expenditure in the January to June period. 

Having previously been the leading advertising medium in the UK for almost half a century, this was a watershed moment for the embattled television industry.  It has taken the Internet little more than a decade to become the largest sector of the advertising market in the UK.

Key Note’s September 2009 survey found that 78.5% of respondents had accessed the Internet during the 12 months prior to interview.  In May 2008, the proportion of respondents who had done this was around 10 percentage points lower, at 68%. 

Similarly, penetration of broadband access continued to edge higher, with 96.3% of the online population (i.e. those who had accessed the Internet during the 12 months prior to the survey) employing this means of access in 2009, up from 92% in the previous year’s survey.  The key issue appears no longer to be whether a consumer has access to broadband but how fast their connection is.

According to the Long-Term Advertising Expenditure Forecast, the Internet will remain the major force behind growth in advertising expenditure over the next 10 years.  While its share of expenditure in the display-advertising sector is forecast to rise to 14% by 2020, in the classified sector, the Internet is expected to become the dominant medium.  Here, its share of recruitment advertising is expected to rise from 25% in 2008 to 31% in 2010 and 58% by 2020.  In other forms of classified advertising, the Internet’s 50% share in 2008 is forecast to exceed 80% by 2020.

Key Note forecasts that expenditure on Internet advertising in the UK will continue to rise in 2009, although the growth rate will be significantly lower than in previous years owing to the recession.  Thereafter, Key Note projects that expenditure on online advertising will rise more rapidly, in line with the increasing popularity and use of the Internet.

Methodology:

In September 2009, Key Note commissioned NEMS Market Research to carry out an original survey examining consumer access to the Internet and attitudes towards Internet advertising.  The research involved a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 16 and over.  Respondents were asked whether they had accessed the Internet in the 12 months prior to the survey.  Those who had done so were asked a series of questions about their use of the Internet. For comparison, the report also shows the results of a May 2008 survey that addressed the same issues.

Source: http://www.keynote.co.uk/

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