Alas, one of the great news papers, The Christian Science Monitor, has announced that it will be ending its print publication as of April. We’ve seen the decline of the print newspaper industry for some time – but this one is really a shame. It will maintain itself as a web property, but this really signifies a turning point for print. As we move into a more challenging advertising market, we’re quite likely to see others take the same route.

The good news is that at least their site is doing pretty well:

Tags: christian science monitor, newspaper, online advertising

I’ve been on the road during the past week presenting about online advertising trends at our annual client meetings. With the current macroeconomic climate, you can imagine that a few of my slides are pretty grim. Not wanting to be a complete downer, I threw in some interesting tidbits about the presidential election.

The graphic that has consistently drawn a reaction is featured below. Since July, Obama has placed 2.1 billion display impressions online, spread out over more than 200 unique ad creatives and 400 web properties. What’s even more stunning is that he’s out-gunned McCain with 23 times the impressions over that time period.

You’ll also note that Obama’s major online push happened not during the Democratic or Republican conventions, but pretty much just as the stock market imploded and popular sentiment was swinging back toward the Democratic nominee. Interesting timing, to say the least.

Tags: mccain, obama, online advertising

Within the whirlwind of negative news regarding the economy and the advertising outlook, I found a significant, welcome trend in the IAB’s recent revenue report covering the first half of this year. I’m scratching my head trying to understand why more hasn’t been made of this, because it portends hugely positive things for the online space.

The IAB recently announced a 15.2% year-over-year growth rate for Internet advertising for the first half of 2008. When you dissect the 15.2% number, some interesting details emerge. Out of nine industries tracked, only four have grown from last year. In and of itself, this finding would fall in line with all of the other negative things we’re hearing about the prospects for advertising.

However, look at the list of the four growth industries: CPG, Auto, Telco and Computing. Do you see what I see? These industries have consistently been the big overall ad spenders for a long, long time. Companies within these four industries make up 42 of the Top 100 national advertisers, and 52% of the advertising spend. And note that the two largest ad-spending industries, i.e. CPG and Auto, have been largely absent from the digital world until very recently. When you combine these four industries, their online ad spending grew 29.8% on a year-over-year basis from the first half of 2007.

The implications of all this? If the big ad spending industries continue to embrace the online medium more aggressively, chances are good that new, significant waves of growth are in the works for the interactive space. In his recent forecast, Jack Myers makes this interesting statement: “We are in the dead center of a two-decade industry transformation that began with the launch of Google in 1998. It will be 2012 before the industry of the future - the 21^st Century model of the media and advertising industry - will begin to prosper.” While new technology trends typically get all the buzz, I have this sneaking suspicion that some of the leading advertisers that make up big ad-spending industries may be out-innovating all of us, and we will see new online market mojo well before 2012.

Tags: auto, computing, cpg, IAB, online advertising, telco

We’re at a strange period in the brief history of online advertising. After 5 years of 30% YOY growth for online advertising, the dramatic economic slowdown will put a damper on all forms of advertising, including online. While online will likely grow faster than all other forms of advertising in 2008, the growth rate could be in the single digits for the first time in 5 years, and who knows what to expect for next year.

Despite the continuing growth in online’s share of overall advertising, many in our industry continue to be confounded that the share hasn’t grown even more than it has. One of the most prevalent arguments is that it’s taken too long for online standards to become established, buying campaigns across many sites continues to pose challenges, and it is still much easier to buy advertising on TV, radio and print than it is online.

Another concern is that consumers ignore online ads, or the ads themselves lack any emotional connection…this could be caused by either poor creative, poor copy - or a poorly planned media buy. But we think another culprit is online ad clutter - too many ads competing for the consumer’s attention. My colleague Jon Gibs just conducted a Webinar on this topic and rolled out our new custom clutter metric - you can download the presentation from our download library later today. I’m interested to know what you think - is this issue impacting your advertising effectiveness or ability to position your site?

Tags: ad clutter, clutter metric, online advertising

I researched a sample of 15 retailers (and a few direct to consumer manufacturers) spanning apparel and accessories, school supplies, computer hardware and software, and ancillary consumer electronics/entertainment categories for the period July 2008 and August 2008, the typical Back To School shopping period. I also looked at online advertising activity for these companies for the same period using our AdRelevance service.

It is worthy to note that Dell and Target are the two heavy hitters on online advertising impressions compared to all others in this sample. Although Amazon and Wal-Mart had significantly fewer online ad impressions than did Dell and Target, Amazon saw huge traffic to its site and Wal-Mart saw significant traffic as well. It seems that Dell has invested proportionately significantly more in online advertising during the BTS period to drive relatively lower traffic to its site than the other retailers.

For other retailers such as Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax and Office Deport, their spend levels and traffic seem proportionate. Does online advertising drive traffic? There is evidence it does, and there are other critical factors that drive online traffic, such as relevancy of retailer to the specific shopping period or need (here BTS), strength of the Brick & Mortar and/or online brand, etc.

Tags: back to school, online advertising, retail