Online Advertising Down 5.3 Percent in First Half of 2009
By Anna Johnson on October 12th, 2009A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers indicates that online advertising spending declined by 5.3 percent in the first half of 2009.
Specifically, online ad spending during the first half of this year was 5.3 percent below that during the first half of 2008. Search ad spending, however, rose during the period – it grew by 47 percent compared with a growth rate of 44 percent over the same period last year. Altogether, search ad revenue was up from $5 billion to $5.15 billion.
Declines occurred in display advertising, with spending on display ads decreasing from around $3.8 billion to about $3.76 billion. Within the display category, banners, rich media, and sponsorship revenues all experienced spending drops. The bright spot was online video, which grew from $345 million to $477 million in the first 6 months of 2009.
Performance based advertising also rose this year, as impression based ad sales declined. The share of online advertising expenditure attributable to CPM-based ads dropped from 42 percent ($4.75 billion) in the first half of 2008 to 38 percent ($4.06 billion) in the first half of this year. At the same time, performance-based ad spending rose from 54 percent of online ad budgets ($6.26 billion) to 58 percent or $6.36 billion. Hybrid buys constituted the remaining 4 percent of ad sales.
Spending in other online ad media also dropped in the first half of 2009. Spending on online classified ads declined from $1.6 billion to $1.1 billion, lead generation and referral-related advertising fell from $806 million to $728 million, and email advertising dropped from $230 million, or 2 percent of overall Internet advertising expenditures, to $149 million (1 percent).
Source: Kate Kaye, “Ad Spending Fell 5 percent in First Half 2009, Says IAB,” ClickZ, October 5, 2009
