WebProNews

Online Advertising in Australia hasn't been doing too bad. In fact, according the Online Advertising Expenditure Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), online advertising dollars in Australia have risen 27% to $1.7 billion over 2008.

"This quarter we've just reported is very good," says IAB CEO Paul Fisher. "I was optimistically anticipating 20 per cent growth (for the last quarter) but I thought it could have been mid to high teens. It's been a very poor January and a very flat February but they're optimistic about March, according to some of the major publishers and networks that I've heard from."

It is interesting to note that nearly half of Australian online ad spending for the quarter fell under the Search and Directories category, while the other half is split between General and Classifieds.

David Kaplan at PaidContent says that the report "doesn’t note that Australia’s online ad business got a fairly late start compared to the U.S. and Europe. Plus, it only judges ad sales across 1,000 sites in Australia."

Still, the future could look a lot less bright as Fisher anticipates online advertising revenue in Australia to reach $2 billion. That's not the kind of growth the industry would prefer, but growth nevertheless. It could be worse.