
The growth of online media buying by local businesses -- particularly for paid search, directories and video -- has outstripped our expectations and has driven our estimates significantly higher for 2008.
Unfortunately for traditional local media companies, convergence sales have become a double- edged sword. Over-reliance on print or broadcast reps selling online products has caused some of them to see single-digit growth rates for online ad revenue at a time when the market is experiencing another surge. We're expecting the local online advertising segment to top out at $8.5 billion this year and to grow by 48 percent in 2008, to $12.6 billion.
The report includes our forecasts for ad spending for the two fastest-growing segments -- online video and paid search, as well as analysis on the top spending categories.