New Zealand online advertising spend has continued to grow despite the recession dramatically reducing ad spend by many businesses. Online advertising accounted for just over 10% of the total advertising spend in 2009, according to IAB NZ figures.

In short, online has been eating traditional advertising’s lunch.

And based on what’s happening in more developed markets, it will soon be eating traditional advertising’s breakfast and dinner too!

Skeptical? Check out this report in MediaWeek UK which states that this year US online advertising spend is set to overtake all print and DM combined.

New York – Spending on digital advertising in the US will overtake print for the first time this year, according to new figures.

The report from marketing analyst Outsell forecasts that marketers will spend $119.6bn on digital strategies and $111.5bn on print, including ads in newspapers and magazines and all direct mail.

Overall, US ad spend is expected to return to growth and increase 1.2% to $368bn.

Despite the growth of online, magazine advertising is expected to increase by 1.9% to $9.4bn after falling 26% last year.

Chuck Richard, vice president and lead analyst at Outsell, said: “Advertisers are directing dollars toward the channels which generate the most qualified leads and most effective branding.

“As they emerge from the recession, they need more accountability, and they’re spreading their spending over a widening set of options.”

The Outsell report surveyed more than 1,000 US marketers online in December.

Last September, a report from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) suggested that online had usurped TV to become the biggest advertising medium in the UK after rising 4.6% in the first half of 2009.

According to the biannual IAB report, internet UK ad spend generated £1.75bn pounds and accounted for 23.5% of all spend. This compared with 18.7% in the first half of 2008. Elsewhere, Television accounted for 21.9%, press display for 18.5% and direct mail for 11.5%.

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