

Online ad growth grinds to a halt - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/16/online-ad-growth-grinds-to-a-halt/

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brfox
Sorry, but those are quarter to quarter growth rates - which, for seasonal
industries, need to be year-to-year instead (unless he shows what these same
quarters did in the previous years). He said that it is 18% higher in 2008 Q3
than 2007 Q3. It could be that every year the big jump is from Q3 to Q4! And,
perhaps, every year, the quarterly jumps from Q4->Q1, Q1->Q2, Q2->Q3 are
relatively small.

Also, as someone noted in the TC comments, this is all in USD, which I presume
is safe, but I don't know what fraction of ad sales are logged in
international currencies, and the dollar has gained recently.

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rapind
Agreed. Incomplete. Slow news day, so let's make some of those charts that
everyone loves to look at to pull in traffic.

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halo
Online ad growth is tied to economic growth. News at 11.

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mlinsey
There is a large group who has argued that online ad growth would be fine in a
recession because businesses would shift their ad dollars into more targeted
and more measurable and results-oriented mediums. I haven't really believed
this argument - even if it's true then owning a bigger piece of a smaller and
smaller pie can't be sustainable for every long. Even so, this argument should
still be taken seriously, and data that might disprove it is therefore
newsworthy.

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helveticaman
I think there will actually be a certain amount of this; that is, advertising
dollars will migrate to the web, at the expense of traditional media. That
being said, overall ad spending will fall, spending on traditional media will
get hammered, and online ad spending will also get hurt, just not as much as
traditional advertising.

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andr
Oh well, time to brush off the old "sell dog food online" business plan.

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callmeed
I just bought some ads on Facebook ... just trying to do my part for the
economy.

For companies that still have the budget to purchase online ads, do you think
this could be a good thing? I'm thinking less competition and lower CPCs ...
I'm fairly new to buying online ads, so I'm not sure.

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fallentimes
You should write about how those end up working out for you. Despite their
poor click through percentage, I've heard good things about them from a value
standpoint.

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callmeed
Good idea ... so far, 1 new customer from 110 clicks. Not terrible I suppose.

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fallentimes
This sucks for sites that rely on ads, but at least it's not the quarter to
quarter decline the publishing industry is and has been witnessing.

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potatolicious
Hopefully now we'll see more startups building products that sell, instead of
free stuff with ad spam.

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vaksel
eh I don't mind that, just install adblock and you get the stuff for free w/o
being annoyed by ads.

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tdavis
Yeah, but if everybody did that you'd no longer get that free stuff...

There are certain things you can't simply charge for successfully. Not many
people would pay a subscription to read a blog, for instance.

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patio11
There are a variety of free-to-many-of-you revenue models which do not involve
advertising, at least not in the sense of you-pay-me-to-rent-eyeballs-that-I-
collect advertising.

Example: Nobody has paid a dime to read my blog. I have not and will not ever
sell an ad on it. But I have made a few hundred dollars (hmm, might be 4
figures by now, will have to check) from mentions of my own software. And I
did get a publishing opportunity from it (I wrote a chapter in a book about
how to do business blogging -- see <http://www.blogblazers.com> if you're
interested). And the increased visibility in my topical community has
translated into links and an SEO advantage for my business. And all of these
things figure into my worth to my company.

But nobody has ever paid to read my blog.

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vaksel
From 12.73% growth in Q4-07 to .61% growth in Q3-08

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vegai
I'm amazed that it is still growing.

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volida
wow, so wrong interpretation of data.

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ntoshev
What is wrong with their interpretation?

The data are incomplete as they don't account for possible seasonality as
brfox pointed out, and because they don't include small ad networks.

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LPTS
The problem with online ads is that TV ads are so much easier to brainwash
people with. When using internets, human primates use their thinkers (a tiny
tiny bit, see youtube comments), when using TV, they don't.

So if you want to manipulate the human primates to pull the levers that get
you the most bananas, and you are using online ads, you won't be able to use
the decades of brainwashing techniques evolved to malevolently manipulate
people's behaviors in favor of the advertiser. So the ads won't work nearly as
good over large populations.

When I use the interwebs, I choose where my attention goes. That tiny amount
of cognitive freedom is completely incompatible with most advertising
philosophy. That's why Fox News hates bloggers, that's why ads will crash
fastest online, and that's why the internet is good for humanity.

All this crap about growth rates of online ad sales is really just gloss on
the relationship between the efficacy of different kinds of advertising and
brainwashing. Web advertising is less brainwashing friendly, so the people who
need to do brainwashing (concentrated powers) will use it less when times are
tight. Google will suffer less, because it's web advertising involve stuff
it's customers are looking to pay attention too.

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ajkirwin
And how does this chart account for possible factors such as:

People leaving for a different, newer platform. More Ad dollars being
funnelled into platforms which don't restrict the type of content on which
they're delivered. Sites that pull ads due to setting up their own delivery
systems

etcetera

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crabapple
it doesn't matter that much if the pie is growing or shrinking right now
anyway...the point is that the way the pie is sliced up is turning into a
winner-take-all economy, with the overwhelming center of gravity being google.
in ten years 95% or more of all ad revenue will be flowing to google if the
trends continue. you can even see this from other established ad placers like
aol and yahoo...every quarter, google pulls more share from them.

this was to be expected. the web ad market is nearly frictionless and google
will be placing ads everywhere. the non-google web is going to move to a
cable-tv model (monthly fees)....its the only way people will survive.

