Home : Newsletters : 2005 : October
The latest Internet Advertising Bureau figures show that online recruitment classified advertising was worth £94.4 million in the first six months of 2005 (this compares to £121 million in the whole of 2004 - see Enhance Media May 2005 newsletter).
The entire online advertising market was valued at £490.8 million over the same time period, giving recruitment a share of 19.2% of all money spent online. Significantly this figure of £490.8 million for all online advertising means that online's share of total UK advertising spend (5.8%) is now bigger than both outdoor & transport's (5.1%) and radio's (3.6%).
The research also shows that online recruitment classified advertising is still the third biggest category of online advertising in the UK. Paid for search listings is the most valuable online category at £197.3 million, followed by traditional banners and buttons at £105.4 million and online recruitment classified at £94.4 million.
Additional figures within the research also breakdown the spend data by industry category. This breakdown shows that recruitment is the largest industry category of online spend (with a share of 19.7%), followed by finance in second place (19.4%) and technology in third place (13.5%).
Whichever way you choose to cut the figures up, the message is simple - online recruitment advertising is growing at a significant rate and should top £200 million for the whole of 2005. The final figure could be even higher - if the relationship between spend in the first and second six months of 2005 is the same as the relationship between the first and second six months of 2004 then total spend for 2005 will be approximately £220 million.
The value of online recruitment advertising provides the clearest explanation to date as to why the sector is currently attracting so much attention from large publishers and online brands in the UK. However it's important to remember that online recruitment is still a young and maturing industry and that the total value of the industry is still significantly smaller than the amounts spent by recruiters on recruitment consultancies and press advertising - online recruitment is growing, but there's a long way still to go!