IAB Adspend - WTF?

It’s a bit like the Premiership transfer window closing, a lot of talk in the run up to it and then not much after.

The IAB figures for Ireland in H1 2014 were released last month, announcing a massive increase of 40% in digital spend YOY for the same period in 2013.

Sounds unbelievable. 

In as much as you can analyse the IAB figures in their release in 2014, in comparing them with the same IAB release in 2013, it’s more incomprehensible.

Overall the IAB report a topline adspend of €130m in H1 2014 versus a €97m adspend in H1 2013.

Fine, well and good.

But there’s the rub, the devil is in the detail. What follows are the actual figures the IAB used in both releases for H1 2013 and H1 2014.

Desktop search has increased 25% YOY from €33.6m to €42m, Mobile search 159% YOY from €11.2m to €29m.

Desktop display has increased 29% from €28.6m to €37m, mobile display has fallen 9% from €8.8m to €8m.

When IAB state that growth is being driven by mobile, this raises a question – WTF?

IAB in the H1 report for 2014 quote 2 different figures for mobile adspend for 2013 of €4.9m and an ‘adjusted’ figure of €16m. In the H1 2013 report they quoted mobile ad revenue at €20.2m.

VOD has essentially doubled YOY according to H1 2014 - €5m for desktop and €2m for mobile.

Again fine well and good.

When you consider that a €7m spend would require approximately 40m streams monthly to achieve that figure (average rate of €15 CPM), that means there is an awful lot of autoplay in display ad video play outs (as it is doubtful the existing VOD media owners have that kind of traffic).

Social Media desktop revenue has fallen 2.5% from €4.1m to €4m and social display mobile increased almost 300% from €2.3m to €6.7m (calculated from total social display desktop and mobile adspend of €10.7m less reported desktop social display of €4m).

When you then analyse the mobile spend itself, it reports social media display at only €4m.

So add in the previous social media display figure on mobile of €6.7m, the mobile VOD adspend figure of €2m and you €8.7m. But IAB report the mobile display adspend at only €8m.

So another question – WTF?

It is bizarre that IAB have consistently reported desktop search over the last five years at 44% of total market, but once mobile comes into the fray it represents 77%.

SO WTF?

Well, it just makes it more confusing than ever.

Only sayin’