About time
While all the talk in recent years has been about how print advertising is plummeting as budgets are moved online, websites haven't exactly been coining it during the recession either.
But new figures from market researcher Strategy Analytics show that the global online advertising market grew by 8.5 percent, year-on-year, in Q4 2009, to $17.2 billion. The a lot of the growth has been attributed to a general loosening of advertiser purse strings, specifically with respect to experimental formats and the holiday season.
Unfortunately, the online advertising market seems to be getting less competitive, with Google increasing its revenue share at the expense of competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft.
"Although the search advertising market continues to grow, most of the growth goes to Google and other local search leaders, such as Baidu and NHN," said Martin Olausson, director at Strategy Analytics. "Advertisers started to loosen their spending control valve on experimental ad formats in Q4, which led to the growth of new ad formats, such as online video ads, in this quarter."
On the whole, there is a feeling of optimism around the online advertising. Companies still have to market their products and perhaps, as they looked for cut-price alternatives during the recession, they've also been forced to acknowledge the limitations of social media. "The online advertising market has suffered badly in the past year but the worst has passed. We have a positive outlook for the coming years," said analyst Jia Wu.
