This year, for the first time, advertisers have spent more online than they have on print newspaper ads.
Digital-marketing research firm eMarketer said U.S. spending on online ads will reach $25.8 billion in 2010, compared with $22.8 billion on print ads…
This could be the most hopeful financial news I’ve read this week. As this trend continues, does this mean that a few internet media sites will be able to draw enough advertiser money to somehow achieve profitability? Or has Google eaten all the big money, leaving just the crumbs for the content providers?
Or it could just mean online ad impression rates and charges are less tightly regulated and a stable economic rate of exchange has not yet been fully implemented.
I’ll go with that one.
People expecting online ad impression profits to continue at the current high rates should go take some basic courses in Business.
I think, if my research is correct, radio is hovering around the mid-20s bracket (in billions) too and is about to be surpassed by internet in the coming 1-2 years. Worldwide print & radio have much more ubiquity but this trend clearly signals the future. It’s sad, because the web’s continued monetisation will be its castration in my view: as other media are shat on by Murdochs and Murdoch Jrs, places like The Stranger, Bay Guardian, WFMU, etc will become more isolated as voices of – well, if not opposition – eclecticism and non-corporatism.
@1 uh, where are ad rates and charges regulated at all? If the Stranger wanted to they could charge $0.0000000000001 an impression or $100,000,000 an impression on the site, and they could charge $0.01 for a full-page ad or $100,000,000 for a full page ad. There is no regulation of this sort of thing beyond what the market will carry.
@3, in the business school that Will went to, they teach you to throw around phrases like “tightly regulated”, “impression rates”, “rate of exchange” and so on without knowing or caring what they mean. Will may not even be aware that they do mean anything; note the way he uses “rate” three times in three different incomprehensible ways.
Coming soon to a classroom on a barstool near you.
Well, I could go into Ad Councils, voluntary regulation, oversight committees or how Net Neutrality was gutted by the panel, but what’s the point of that, Fnarf?
Again, this, like the housing bubble that said your house was worth $500k when it was only worth $300k, will pass. Don’t buy an IPOs in this market space unless you intend to flip and quit them.
This is a little off subject, but I just wanted to point out that at least the ads in print media don’t stalk you. The other day I saw a YouTube video of extreme skiing put up by a company that sells helmet cams. I followed a link back to their website to watch more videos. Ever since then almost every time I click on any webpage one of the ads on that page is for that helmet cam. It’s getting really creepy.
The same thing is true of a couple of other companies that I have done business with in the past. No matter where I go on the web I am almost sure of finding one of their ads.
I always thought that “Big Brother” was going to be the government, but it turns out that it is big business instead.