Web Advertising: Moving on Up!

A recent study from IDC says:

Internet advertising in the United States will continue to grow fast even as the current economic woes will lead to a contraction in ad spending overall, essentially accelerating the transfer of marketing budgets from the traditional media into the new. During the forecast period, Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large. IDC finds overall Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.

The Internet will go from the number 5 medium all the way to the number 2 medium in just 5 years, making it bigger than newspapers, bigger than cable TV, bigger even than broadcast TV, and second only to direct marketing. Read More Here.

Blood in the Water

Henry Blodget says:

“If your career, portfolio, or fortune isn’t tied to the newspaper business, however, rejoice. The newspaper industry’s loss is your gain!In ten years, print-paper circulation and ad revenue will likely be a quarter of what it is today, if that.

Why? Because:

    • As circulations and ad revenue continue to fall, print economies-of-scale will reverse, cutting further into already shrinking print margins.
    • As “green business” practices take hold, a new generation of consumers will come to view the newspaper industry as a horrifically wasteful polluter that eats forests, gobbles fuel and electricity, and farts untold amounts of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere–all to deliver information that might have been interesting yesterday.
    • A generation of newspaper ad salespeople and ad sales buyers will gradually retire or quit, and advertisers will increasingly ask themselves why they are spending billions on ads they have no idea whether anyone looks at.
    • As financial and environmental pressures increase and a better grasp of reality sets in, more papers will opt to do what the Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, did last weekend: Shut down their print businesses, fire a third of their staff, and put what’s left online.” Read More