A Bright Spot in a Dark Sky

Online advertising spending still slated to increase in 2009.

The past few days, weeks and months have been filled with news that has been less than uplifting. Discussions surrounding the Credit Crunch, Unemployment Rates and Foreclosures and the Stock Market have quickly made way from the boardroom to the water-cooler.

Consumers will continue to worry about how they are going to fill up their gas tanks, pay their mortgage and keep their job. And until there are clear signs of an economic recovery, business optimism will not improve.
So what’s the bright side?

Leading media forecasters are predicting that 2009 will truly be a Buyer’s Market.

Unit costs should come down without the pressures of the Olympics and Political activity. CPMs will remain flat as audience erosion is expected to continue in traditional broadcast outlets.

Internet ad spending is expected to remain strong. According to ZenithOptmedia, internet ad spending will account for 13.8 percent of all world ad spend in 2010. In the U.S., the current forecast is that Internet ad spending will grow 21 percent this year and 19 percent in 2009. This growth continues to be fueled by the evolution of technology and how people are using it. Our challenge is to try and keep up.

A new study finds that web users are more likely to click on a text or banner ad than a video one. iPerceptions, a provider of web-focused customer analytics, analyzed user-generated feedback from more than 14,000 visitors to leading media web sites in August. There were a few surprising results:

• 25 percent of respondents said they were most likely to click on simple text ads, while 20 percent said they were likely to click on right banners and 12 percent were likely to click on top banners
• 11 percent of those surveyed said they were just as likely to click on a video ad
• People 25-34 aren’t drawn to video ads anymore than text ads; in fact, thoseyounger than 25 are the only ones who seem to be attracted to video ads.
• 40 percent of consumers who are likely to click on any ad make less than $50,000 a year and only 15 percent make more than $150,000

As the Internet is projected to be one of the bright spots in a cloudy marketing sky, we’ll be sharing some more stats, research and tools in the near future of the some of the more interesting and effective practices being put into play. Next up….the evolution of targeting.

[ photo credit: Faithful Chant]