Online Ads: Up, Up and Away

It looks like the advertising community has not only embraced the Internet but giving it a great, big bear-hug as online advertising in the first-quarter jumped 38% to $3.9-billion from a year-earlier, and 6% from the fourth-quarter, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PWC. In a classic case of understatement, PWC's Peter Petrusky said “The Internet continues to shape the media landscape as more advertising dollars are going online. It is abundantly clear that marketers are seeing a compelling opportunity to leverage the Internet as a powerful medium that drives both branding and sales results.” While paid-search continues to account for most online ad spending (and lines the coffers of Google), video is gathering a growing momentum as advertisers look to combine the branding power of television and the measure-ability of the Web. Before anyone gets too excited about online advertising, it should be noted it only accounts for about 5% of total spending. Still, the market is growing and it's having a huge impact on the business models of newspapers, television broadcasters and radio stations. My industry – newspapers – need to jump hard on the online advertising bandwagon by providing clients with opportunity to place advertisers around relevant content. And the sooner newspapers forget about trying to sell online subscriptions, the better because Google News killed that business model a long time ago. The Guardian has a story about how online advertising in the U.K. will surpass newspaper advertising by the end of 2006. Wow!