The New Zealand IAB has today released final figures for 2009 &, as expected, the amount of money being invested in online advertising by NZ businesses has continued to grow.

Total NZ online spend for 2009 was NZ$213.89m, which represented a 10.06% growth over 2008 (NZ$193.15m). Not a bad result, given most businesses slashed their advertising budgets due to the recession. Clearly the increase in online advertising has been at the expense of offline as marketers have to do more with less.

No big surprises in that Search and Directories led the way with year on year growth of 31.64% in 2009. This represents 37% of all interactive spend in 2009, up from 31% in 2008, and edges New Zealand a little closer to the Australian figure of 50.9% being spent on paid search advertising.

Display advertising grew 7.67% to $64.30m from $58.12m and accounted for 30% of all interactive spend in 2009. Classifieds decreased from $75.32m to $71.43m, reflecting the decrease in job advertisements.

2009 Total Ad Spend by Channel vs. 2008