@ IAB: The Good News For Online Ad Spend Is Found In Other Categories' Bad News
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Online advertising will grow 4.3 percent in the U.S. this yearas total ad spend plunges 7 percentbut it could shoot up 20 percent next year, said Mark Mahaney, director, Internet Sector for Citigroup Investment Research. Speaking at the IAB Annual Conference. Without the internet, U.S. advertising would be down 10 percent. But online could be saved by the misery of other media formats, as newspapers close, Yellow pages
Silver lining for online: Last year, $25 billion was spent on online ads. And while newspapers, Yellow Pages and direct mail each garnered billions more, the trouble facing those industries will surely send more dollars to the web, helping to offset the wider recessionary pressures, Mahaney said. Still, he expects that the online travel category will be particularly hurt from the general pullback in ad spend, as "we are only half-way through the current job-loss period."
Mobile hope: There were 4 billion handsets in use around the world. That also presents additional opportunities for digital. Mahaney suggests that if there were only 10 searches per month per mobile phone, that would eventually equal what PC online advertising spend attracts.
By David Kaplan