Last year $12.6 billion was spent in online advertising by local advertisers. Sales were dominated by pure-play Internet companies with no ties to legacy media However, for the first time since we began tracking local shares in 2001, pure-play companies lost ground. It’s all outlined here in our 7th annual revenue survey of over 6,000 local Web sites.
Are small- and medium-sized business owners changing their spending habits? Are they abandoning traditional media for the Internet? Is the recession a tipping point for their ad spend?
For our 2008 Q4 update we have expanded the scope of these spending estimates to include Online Sales Promotions and Marketing Public Relations (MPR). We continue to forecast growth in both Sales Promotions and MPR as advertisers migrate toward marketing vehicles that maximize ROI. The complete version includes a more granular look at the different components of online ad spending in each market - Banners, Local Search, E-mail, Streaming Video/Audio, Promotions, and Public Relations.
These reports provide detailed U.S. ad spending information for 2008 related to each classified vertical across 11 media categories including Interactive. They feature sales information related to the vertical. They also provide ad spend forecasts so that managers can make decisions based on trends. In addition, a vertical report can purchased for any local market definition (DMA, county, city, ZIP code). (These are PDF versions; Excel spreadsheets are available also by contacting us.)
2009 will be the first in many in which some components of interactive advertising show little or no growth, or may even decline. The changes foreseen are not cyclical, and show no sign of improving quickly, irrespective of upward movement in the nation’s economy.
