Three Reasons Not to Panic When Online Ad Spending Drops 5.4%

360i CEO Bryan Wiener wrote a column for Advertising Age’s Digital Next blog today that lists three reasons marketers should be optimistic as they head into 2010. Despite a recent IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers report that found Internet ad spending fell 5 percent during the first half of the year, Bryan notes that digital marketers have a lot to look forward to in the coming months. We’ve provided a quick recap of his points below, but you can read the full article on Ad Age’s Digital Next blog.

1. The recession has accelerated share shift. Overall advertising expenditures were down significantly more than 5% in the first half of this year, indicating that Internet advertising is grabbing a larger share of the marketing pie.
2. Search advertising continues to grow. Search spend is increasing even in the face of an incredibly challenging consumer driven economy that has hurt key search categories.
3. Marketers are reassessing the role of digital. More broadly, the great recession has forced marketers to reevaluate all of their programs, which can only help digital growth given the enormous imbalance between consumer time spent online (30%) and advertising dollars spent online (less than 10%).

While the first half of 2009 was extremely difficult, our discussions with our clients and major digital platforms lead us to believe that fourth quarter and 2010 will mark a return to growth. Moreover, digital growth should be sustainable for years to come if for no other reason than consumer behavior dictates that marketers need to be where the consumers spend their time and consumers are voting with their mouse in increasing numbers.