Online bucks advertising trends

Online advertising is predicted to hold its own in 2009, bucking the trends outlined in the latest reports which make gloomy reading for the advertising industry as a whole.

Monday, 8 December 2008

ZenithOptimedia’s Advertising Expenditure Forecasts report predicts that online advertising will grow 18 per cent in 2009, against a backdrop of falling revenues across traditional media which will see North American and Western European markets declining by 5.7 per cent and 1.0 per cent respectively.

Meanwhile, GroupM’s This Year, Next Year report forecasts a rise of five per cent for internet advertising in 2009, against an overall fall in all measured media of 0.2 per cent.

The news follows the recent publication of a report by Enders Analysis which predicted UK newspaper ad revenues will fall by 21 per cent in 2009 while online growth will fall to just over 2 per cent.

The ZenithOptimedia report argues that the internet is vitally important during times of economic difficulty “as advertisers turn to it for its innovation and accountability, which is particularly important in a recession when every line of a budget must be justified”.

Zenith forecasts a positive long term future for online advertising with the medium expected to take a 15.6 per cent share of global ad expenditure in 2011, 5.2 points ahead of magazines and 5.6 points behind newspapers, having narrowed the gap from 15.1 points in 2008.

Guy Phillipson, Chief Executive, IAB UK, comments: "This global forecast from Zenith is very encouraging, especially for share of total media. In the UK we expect our share to be a world-leading 20 per cent in 2008, and this will continue to grow past TV in 2009".