Despite widespread anxieties over economic uncertainty,  a report released by eMarketer this week highlights online advertising as one of the faster-growing markets out there.

Spending by large brand marketers and SMBs will be a key factor in future growth. Not only does the report forecast a 10.5% increase in US online ad spending next year, but in its accompaniment will be yearly double-digit growth through 2014 where spending will hit $40.5 billion! That is more than a ten fold increase of the rate of total media ad spending growth, projected to rise a mere 1.2% in 2011.

What are the proximate “causes” of this growth, so to speak?

Marketing Focus: Marketers of all shapes and sizes recognize the internet’s centrality in our lives and are allocating more and more of their ad budgets towards digital media.

Sense of Stability: While seemingly ironic, the reaction of many marketers’ to the recession is to spend more and more for online advertising. According to the report, this is evidence of a growing trend that sees internet advertising as “a ’sure thing’ compared to most traditional media.”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): A recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau finds that more than $5 billion was spent on SEO in the first half of 2010 alone. Search is projected to maintain its status as the largest recipient of ad spending through 2014.

Video Advertising is growing: In particular, video ad formats are growing at an explosive rate  (especially popular amongst big brand marketers) and this is expected to pick up substantially in 2011.

What does this mean for political ads? David Hallerman, principal analyst at eMarketer, claims that they’ll [thankfully] continue to permeate our cable boxes (where I can continue to fast-forward through them).

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 9th, 2010 at 12:52 pm 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.