According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. online ad spending declined 5% in the first quarter, which is the first decline since 2002.
“””The latest expenditure, $5.5 billion, compares with $5.8 billion during the first quarter of 2008, when online-ad spending surged 18% from a year earlier. It comes after U.S. online ad spending grew 11% in 2008, the slowest rate since 2002.””
The good news from the report is that search advertising held up relatively well in the first quarter and that display advertising was particularly weak.
The first quarter does not mean much to me. If we get a second quarter of continues drop in spending then it would be worrying. Considering the state of our economy, financial crisis, housing crisis, unemployment rates across the country a 5% drop in the first quarter is pretty good. This is the money saving quarter for most businesses, there was a Presidential change and the tube said kept talking about a “depression around the corner”. %5 is peanuts and I’m very happy to be in the online advertising industry.
On another note Fox Interactive is closing offices in SoCal and planning deep layoffs according to a few articles out this morning.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fox6-2009jun06,0,568996.story
Hopefully this trend does not continue as it will mean that deep cut backs and layoffs are hitting interactive advertising late.