Online research and advisory outfit Outsell estimates that advertisers will have moved $65 billion in 2009 to online marketing, but we’re not talking about advertising. That enormous figure, about equal to total US spend on television and cable advertising, includes spending on SEO and their own destination sites. So, in addition to buying traffic, advertisers are investing in their own mousetraps, hoping the growing online audience will beat a path to their door.

Is this bad news for the online advertising ecosystem? No. It is a reflection of advertisers’ growing sophistication and understanding of the online marketing universe, which we all know extends beyond advertising. Online traffic isn’t necessarily always bought–online properties can be groomed to receive traffic through search or through cross-channel investments (which can be surprisingly effective). However, advertisers needing scale or granular targeting will always have to reach outside their zone of control and buy. Unless they get too aggressive, budgets dedicated to online advertising will probably continue to be  well spent as long as the gap between time spent online and online advertising spend continues to yawn.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.