15-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Ireland's digital advertising spend tops €1bn for the first time, study finds
The report shows spending on digital advertising increased by 11pc in 2024 to a record €1.06bn.
Digital display advertising accounted for the biggest share and strongest growth, the report says. It grew by 13pc to €669m with video and social (media) being the primary drivers.
Search advertising grew by 6pc to €331m. Online classified advertising grew to €59m, accounting for a 6pc share of total digital advertising spend.
IAB Ireland is the trade organisation for digital advertising.
The IAB Online Adspend report was conducted by market research firm IRM.
The strong performance of video and social across the globe has also been seen in the 2024 Irish market
The research shows the top performing formats in non-social display were video, with growth of 25pc year-on-year; and what are known as section takeovers/tenancies, an industry term for display ads that take up every ad slot on a website's homepage also grew strongly.
The display format remains the dominant format in the Irish market, holding a share of 63pc of spending, the research found.
IAB Ireland's CEO, Suzanne McElligott, said trends here reflected global markets.
'The strong performance of video and social across the globe has also been seen in the 2024 Irish market with total video adspend up 20pc and social amounting to 77pc of all display adspend in 2024,' she said.
'We also call out particularly strong growth of 25pc for broadcaster/publisher video and 18pc growth year-on-year for other engaging publisher display formats'.
IRM's chief executive Madeleine Thor said the research shows video was a dynamic driver of digital advertising last year.
'It is not surprising that adspend participants predict that video will continue to be a top growth driver for adspend in 2025,' she said.
In its research, IRM measures digital adspend across Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Ireland.
Its 2024 report draws on information from 23 leading publishers and media owners, two ad-networks and eight media-buying agencies that participated in the study.
