Online Ad Growth Slower Than Predicted?

April 15, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik

eMarketer, like many others, since 2008 have been predicting how online marketing spending (ad spend) would grow this year. Due to the economic situation, advertisers are pulling back budgets and many have stopped trial and error strategies which I believe are a cause for an ad slowdown since so many new channels rise month to month.

This isn’t the time for businesses to try new avenues but rather spend where they know they have a proven ROI to look forward to.

To start with, eMarketer had predicted an increase of 8.9% for 2009, but now predicts that the rate of growth for US Internet ad spending in 2009 will be approximately one-half the rate of growth for 2008—only 4.5% this year.

“…Several other sources are barely on the plus side of growth for this year. Barclays predicts a meager 2.3% increase from 2008 and Jack Myers 2.9%.

Bernstein Research is a little more optimistic with a forecast of 3.8% growth. With a brighter outlook, Morgan Stanley says US online ad spending will grow at nearly a 10% rate and ZenithOptimedia is predicting a rosy 18.1% jump for 2009—that is unless they too revise their numbers down.

There you are. You decide. But eMarketer still says 4.5%.”