Online recruitment advertising spend up 50% year on year

The latest IAB figures show that online recruitment advertising was worth £182 million in 2005. This is a 50% increase from £121 million in 2004. The figures also show that the entire UK online advertising market (including paid for search, banners, sponsorships, email advertising, non-recruitment classifieds, interruptive formats and other display advertising) was worth £1,366 million in 2005.

The largest growth area is paid for search listings which grew from £429 million in 2004 to £768 million in 2005 and accounted for over half of all online advertising spend.

Online advertising now accounts for approximately 8% of all UK advertising spend and having overtaken radio and outdoor in recent years is now closing in on national press, which currently has a market share of 11%, as an advertising medium.

The IAB release spend figures every six months and despite some fluctuations in the growth rate between these six monthly figures, the overall pattern for online recruitment is one of consistent growth with spend figures increasing by 50% for the second consecutive year. Online recruitment spend was £81 million in 2003, increased to £121 million in 2004 and has now increased by another 50% to £182 million in 2005.

If this pattern of growth continues then online recruitment advertisingwill be valued at approximately £270 million in 2006.If this is the case then online recruitmentspend will have overtaken national newspaper recruitment advertising in terms of value. Thiswould be an extremely significant benchmark in the development of the online market, but we'll have to wait until this time next year to find out!