Online Ads Decline by 5% in 2009

April 13, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik

It is reported by MarketingCharts in their latest report that online ads will decline by 5% in 2009. We can attribute this downturn to current economic status and advertisers pulling back on budgets. Though there may be a decline of 5% towards online channels, you can only imagine how Newspapers and other media sources are coping with this advertiser pushback since online seems to be where many advertisers are seeing a better ROI since its actually trackable through analytics, etc.

“Though online advertising in the US grew by more than 10% overall in 2008, the dramatic slowdown in the fourth quarter has prompted media analyst Screen Digest to forecast an overall revenue drop of nearly 5% for the medium in 2009.

As a result of what it calls a Q408 “tipping-point,” Screen Digest has revised its 2009-2010 forecasts for online advertising in the US. The media analyst firm now predicts that all categories and sub-categories except video will decline in 2009:

* Banner advertising will drop 8.8% and will not be fully compensated by the double digit growth of online video, so that the display category will be down 3.6%.
* Search will shrink by 2%.
* Non-display categories such as classifieds will experience double digit falls.

Overall, the total internet advertising market will shrink by 4.8% in 2009 and only stabilize (up 0.4%) in 2010.

Screen Digest’s view of the market for 2009 is based on the US IAB’s recently released full-year report for 2008. While internet advertising increased in 2008, the fourth quarter was almost flat at +2.6%, a significant change from the first nine months of the year, which were up about 15%.”

You can see the full report here