The great news is that online has bucked wider advertising trends, growing at a rate of 13.5% to £2.26 billion for the first half of the year.
As the wider UK advertising sector has experienced growth of just 1.4% between January and June 2011, online has been buoyed by double-digit growth in search and display to hit a record share of 27%.
One of the key areas of success was online video which continued its recent upwards trajectory by recording a growth rate of 100%. This performance helped the display sector as a whole to grow 18.5% year on year to £510 million for H1 2011.
Also notable in the findings is the considerable investment of the finance and FMCG sectors in online display. Finance took over from the entertainment sector as the top category spender in display for the first half of 2011. Meanwhile the biggest winner was FMCG, which has grown six percentage points in two and a half years to become the second biggest display category online.
