2009 Online Ad Spending Worse than Expected but Bottoming Out: eMarketer

http://promomagazine.com/news/online-ad-spending-bottoming-out-1215/

Marketing research firm eMarketer has revised its estimate for U.S. Web advertising once again, and now says spending this year will represent a 4.6% decrease over last year's online ad budget.

The agency forecasts that companies will turn out to have spent $22.4 billion on Internet-based advertising this year, primarily in the categories of search marketing, display ads and online classifieds.

Previously eMarketer also revised its online ad estimated downward in October, saying that online U.S. ad spending for the year would drop off by 2.6%. prior to that earlier revision, the company had been anticipating spending growth of 4.5% in the market.

Right now eMarketer expects U.S. spending on online advertising to increase by 5.5% in 2010. The main driver will be the rise of online video advertising, which Hallerman expects will become "the main form of brand advertising in the digital space." Spending on online video will grow at yearly rates ranging from 34% to 54% until 2014, in eMarketer's estimate, and increase from a total of 41.4 billion in 2010 to a projected $5.2 billion in 2014.