How large are the US & worldwide display ad market? First, let’s limit the view to display banner ads only, not including related rich media, digital video or sponsorship advertising (which last week’s IAB/PwC included under its display advertising umbrella. This more limited definition of display advertising comprises approximately 21% of the overall online advertising market in the United States.

US Display Market

Like the projections we came up with a couple of weeks ago for the contextual advertising market, we begin with eMarketer’s projections in November of 2008 for years 2008-2012. How accurate were they with respect to 2008? Pretty close to the IAB/PwC number, actually. eMarketer projected $4.63 billion, while the IAB/PwC study estimate turned out $4.68 billion, a difference of about 1%.

2008: $4.6 billion (+5.8%)
2009: $4.9 billion (+6.5%)
2010: $5.4 billion (+10%)
2011: $6.2 billion (+15%)
2012: $7.2 billion (+16%)

Some could plausibly claim the 2008 estimate is overly optimistic, being a positive number (!), although it’s not entirely unrealistic if we expect a mid-year cessation to the turndown and a resumption of reasonably healthy growth. If you believe, as I do, that any downturn is attributable to the temporary economic weakness and not an intrinsic defect in display advertising, then any shortfall in 2009 might be recouped fully in the following years.

Global Display Market

For the worldwide picture, we start with IDC’s market estimates, apply an approximate 20% of that figure attributable to display, and apply similar growth figures as those expected for the US:

2008: $13.0 billion
2009: $14.9 billion
2010: $16.6 billion
2011: $18.1 billion
2012: $20.2 billion

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.