There has been a lot of talk about the online advertising industry being in trouble because of the economy, yet we continue to see example after example of the contrary. The latest example is highlighted by VentureBeat, and concerns ad network Glam Media, which despite making job cuts earlier in the year, is still seeing growth in advertising:
Glam Media, one of the newfangled content and advertising networks assumed by many industry observers to be vulnerable to financial meltdown, says it still hasn’t seen any marked decline in online display advertising. Yet, to be cautious, it is slashing salaries by moving to a system called “variable pay.”
Glam may be being cautious, and who can blame them, given the amount of doomspeak regarding the industry, but we continue to see evidence of growth. For example, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)showed us that the third quarter was the second highest of all time with Internet ad revenues reaching nearly $5.9 billion. The IAB makes up 86% of online advertising in the U.S.
eMarketer recently showed that while growth is projected to slow in 2009, it is still growing. It says online ad spending will reach 25.7 billion in 2009, which is 8.9 percent over the $23.6 billion that will be spent in 2008, although it did predict 14.5 year-over-year growth for 2009 back in August.
As far as small businesses are concerned, Ad-ology has released some survey results indicating that over a fourth of them plan to spend more on advertising in ’09, and another 60% plan to spend the same as this year. And with regards to online advertising specifically, 69% intend to spend more or the same next year.
Interestingly enough, participants in that survey did not seem very interested in rising trends in new media. 77% do not use online video, 83% do not podcast, and 82% do not use mobile advertising.
