Online advertising tops magazines and radio

A surge in spending on online advertising in the September 2007 quarter in Australia will see it leap ahead of radio and magazines to become the third biggest advertising platform, a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report shows.

Online advertising spending in the three months to September increased 6.8% to $347.8 million. That result should push the total online advertising spend for 2007 to $1.4 billion, a 40% increase on last year.

This would put online advertising ahead of radio, which is set to book $990 million, and magazines, on $1.35 billion. Newspapers continue to attract the biggest ad spend, likely to hit $3.5 billion in 2007, just ahead of free-to-air television on $3.4 billion.

Search and directory advertising attracted the biggest chunk of online spending, followed by banner and pop-up ads and classifieds, the report found.