The latest Internet advertising figures for Australia have been published this week by the Internet Advertising Bureau, using data compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The new data shows that overall growth in this advertising sector has slowed over the previous year, yet there was still a 34.5% growth to $1.34 billion, with the market on course to achieve sales of $1.7 billion in 2008.

During 2007 the report says that the search and directories category - which is dominated by Google - has increased its level of spend at a rate that's double the figures seen for display advertising and classifieds. Although these figures remain an estimate since Google refuses to reveal their numbers, the search advertising sector was reported to have grown by 56% to $622.2 million, compared with a growth of 21% for display ($367m) and 19% for classifieds ($356m).

All 3 sectors are still showing good signs of continuing growth, although the search sector demonstrates the ongoing recognition of this market as a powerful marketing technique and a popular method of online advertising for many companies. Despite previous annual growth rates of around 60% for the Internet advertising sector as a whole, the increase of 35% in 2007 is seen as a slowdown for the market but still a healthy and sustainable growth pattern.