Dueling Headlines On The Online Ad Market: Half-Full Or Half-Empty
from the depends-on-who-you-read dept
I just saw a bunch of headlines fly by and the contrast in them seemed worth noting. Here are just a few, with a brief intro based on whether it’s a glass half-full headline or a glass half-empty headline:
- Good News!: U.S. Online Advertising Up 15.2%
- Bad News!: US Online Ad Growth Slows in 2008’s First Half
- Good News!: Online ad revenue strong first half of 2008: What about the second half?
- Bad News!: As we fill tanks, growth in Net ads slows
- Good News!: Search-ad revenues grow amid market malaise
- Bad News!: Online Ad Growth Declines in First Half 2008
- Good News!: Internet marketing sees “incredible” spending increase
The most accurate may be from the AFP, who notes: Internet advertising revenue up but slowing, and the LA Times: Internet advertising grows slightly, but analysts worry about the future. Basically, the numbers are still up but at a slower pace than in the past. How you interpret that, apparently, depends on whether you’re fundamentally an optimist or a pessimist. It seems pretty clear that there’s still plenty of money heading into the online advertising world — and it was going to plateau at some point. You can’t keep up ridiculous growth levels at all times, especially when the broader economy runs into trouble. Plus, the fact that a healthy percentage of online advertising was tied to the mortgage/loan/financial services industry — you’d have to expect some slowing of growth. No matter what you believe the future holds for the online ad market, you have to admit the juxtaposition of headlines is rather amusing.
Perhaps much more interesting, however, is this analysis of what happened to the advertising market during the Great Depression. It found that while some companies shied away from advertising, the ones that did well focused in on more effective advertising, which worked wonders. So the advertising market itself didn’t collapse, it just got more focused, and those who used it wisely ended up doing quite well.
Filed Under: online advertising, optimism, pessimism
Comments on “Dueling Headlines On The Online Ad Market: Half-Full Or Half-Empty”
Survival of the Fittest
Just as how only the fittest plants and animals can survive a drought, only the fittest will survive this crisis.
Of course, there is a lot of bias. 2 out of the 3 bad-news sources are websites with an off-line business (business week, PC world), while all the good-news sources are entirely web based (Webpronews, zdnet, cnet, and clickthrough).
Innovation is the fuel
People get bored. The online advertising market is just starting but like any other business it requires ongoing innovation and development. Search is getting awfully boring, as are ads simply splashed on Web sites.
Semantics, but...
I hate all of this alarmism.
” a steady drop in the rate of online ad spending growth“
So advertising is not declining, and even the title is incorrect: “Online Ad Growth Declines in First Half 2008”
How about a new terminology? or rather, an older one:
When dealing with actual VOLUME of a market, use decreasing/declining. (like the relationship between velocity and speed)
When talking about GROWTH RATES of a market, use the term ACCELERATE and DECCELERATE.
The market isn’t falling, the rate of change of interyear growth is slowing.
The market is still increasing, just not as fast as it was.
guess what?
That is a FUNDAMENTAL REALITY of a saturated [or near saturated] market. You can expect that it will slow down in growth at some point – it’s when it doesn’t that you have to start fearing for the bubble and bust.
Sorry to rant, but reporting idiocy such as this annoys the heck out of me all the time. It creates alarmist reactions and wreaks havoc on markets by playing on ingrained responses to language.
You’d think that someone who is a WRITER would understand such things and know how to properly and accurately express themselves.
Here’s to hoping someone out there who gives a hoot will read this and restylize their writing.
thanks
online ad.
http://www.advertiseontheinternetforfree.com