{"id":2773,"date":"2008-10-06T18:16:09","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T22:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=2773"},"modified":"2008-10-06T18:16:09","modified_gmt":"2008-10-06T22:16:09","slug":"is-online-advertising-heading-for-a-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/10\/06\/is-online-advertising-heading-for-a-cliff\/","title":{"rendered":"Is online advertising heading for a cliff?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the markets see-saw between concern and outright panic over the fate of the U.S. financial bailout, the credit shock that&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2008\/10\/06\/tech-stocks-take-it-on-the-chin-as-market-continues-to-freefall\/\">rippling through<\/a> not just North America but most of the Western hemisphere, and the potential for a severe economic downturn, anyone with a Web-based business that depends on advertising has <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5058775\/friday-is-always-black\">to be asking<\/a>: Is this the beginning of the end? If the U.S., Canada and to some extent even Europe are in the depths of a recession (or possibly even worse), what does that mean for online ad spending? The answer could mean life or death for some startups.<\/p>\n<p>This debate has been going on for almost a year now. Google&#8217;s stock price came under fire around the end of last year and the <a href=\"http:\/\/googlewatch.eweek.com\/content\/google_advertising\/recession_bound_fewer_people_clicking_on_google.html\">beginning of this year<\/a> because of concern that the search giant might see a downturn in ad spending that would hit the bottom line. Has it? A little, but not a huge amount (although <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/News\/Story\/google-susceptible-continued-economic-slowdown\/story.aspx?guid={C5BEB716-2666-4039-A8AB-0ADD6B6B9786}\">some say<\/a> that could change). In fact, there are those who argue that search-related ad spending is likely to be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-webads5-2008aug05,0,3604360.story\">the most durable<\/a> even in a shaky economy &#8212; in part because businesses can get more bang from buying AdWords than a newspaper ad or TV spot.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So what about the rest of the online ad market? In June, representatives from Seeking Alpha, TheStreet, comScore, BankRate and Forbes said that they were seeing media buys that were smaller <a href=\"http:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/article\/80854-how-badly-will-a-recession-hit-online-advertising\">and more short-term<\/a>. However, Web ad spending in the U.S. was one of the only ad sectors to grow in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tns-mi.com\/news\/09242008.htm\">first six months<\/a> of this year, and the IAB says that Britain saw higher than expected growth <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/media\/will-the-internet-survive-the-economic-meltdown-952287.html\">as well<\/a>. (<b>Update:<\/b> The latest numbers from the IAB show that online advertising <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.zdnet.com\/BTL\/?p=10329\">rose by 15 per cent<\/a> in the first half of the year). Many marketers <a href=\"http:\/\/bits.blogs.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/21\/online-advertising-is-a-lagging-indicator-of-a-recession\/\">believe that<\/a> online advertising has actually been benefiting from the economic uncertainty, as advertisers look at the Web as more measurable and effective.<\/p>\n<p>Svetlana Gladkova at Profy says that the concern about advertising in the wake of a sour economy led her to take a look at what happened during the Great Depression, and she found that to her surprise, the advertising business was <a href=\"http:\/\/profy.com\/2008\/10\/06\/sure-about-pending-collapse-of-ad-supported-internet\/\">actually pretty healthy<\/a> during those years. Are ad-dependent businesses going to sail through the economic turmoil without a care? Hardly. But an online-advertising apocalypse doesn&#8217;t seem terribly likely either. If anything, it seems as though traditional media should be the one feeling twitchy at this point. The competition could be intensifying.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the markets see-saw between concern and outright panic over the fate of the U.S. financial bailout, the credit shock that&#8217;s rippling through not just North America but most of the Western hemisphere, and the potential for a severe economic downturn, anyone with a Web-based business that depends on advertising has to be asking: Is &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/10\/06\/is-online-advertising-heading-for-a-cliff\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is online advertising heading for a cliff?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}