Marketing in general increased by 0.6 per cent during the final quarter of 2011 but online advertising enjoyed greater growth as advertisers move away from traditional formats, according to the latest Bellwether Report.
While main media spend only grew marginally, online advertising budgets increased by 13.9 per cent during the final three months of 2011.
Search advertising spend grew by the largest amount in two years, enjoying a 14.3 per cent increase, up from a 9.3 rise during the third quarter of last year.
Nicola Mendelsohn, president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, which produced the report, said: "This rise in spend for a second successive quarter shows that many companies remain committed to invest in marketing at present.
"The impact of key sporting events such as the London 2012 Games and the Euro football championships will likely lead to increased buoyancy in the marketplace with a corresponding boost in marketing expenditure."
Tim Elkington, Director of Research and Strategy at the IAB, comments: “We tracked the growth of online advertising as 13.5% on a like for like basis for the first half of 2011 and these new figures from the IPA suggest that this growth in online is continuing.
"The results of the Online Advertising Spend Study for the full year 2011 that we carry out in conjunction with PwC will be out at the start of April and these will allow us to go into more detail across all the online formats – search, classified and display and to pinpoint some of the exciting trends within online advertising, such as the growth of online video.”
