Just an Online Minute... Due to Rebound

by Jan 31, 2001, 12:00 AM

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As you've probably already heard, Amazon.com today announced 1,300 layoffs nationwide, in an effort to turn a profit. Obviously, no dot-com - even a giant one - is immune to the current elements. But, instead of allowing the visions of dead dot-coms to dance in our heads, let's remember that this does not signal doom for the advertising industry. This could even be considered a sign of the Internet growing up.

Ad spending is due to rebound in the fourth quarter of this year, says the newest Myers Mediaenomics report, which indicates far greater optimism on ad spending than has been reported in recent months.

Based on proprietary research among marketers and ad agency executives, the report says that the ad community is more optimistic in its plans to spend advertising dollars over the next 12 to 18 months than they were in 1999 at the height of the media economic boom.

This is not a recession we're in. Jack Myers, chief economist, Myers Reports, says the current downturn is more of a "cyclical hiccup" caused by "predictable and cyclical factors." Myers faults "overly aggressive and misinformed press reports" for all this fearful talk of a sustained recession in the media industry.

The report states that Internet companies are reinforcing a negative public perception of the advertising marketplace "by overtly blaming an advertising slowdown for layoffs and under-performance. Instead, they should be laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of inexperienced and incompetent management and investors who created unrealistic expectations for an emerging and mostly unproven medium."

According to Myers, the "dramatic implosion" of the Internet economy over the past several months has been "a healthy purging -- not of companies -- but of investors and executives who have little knowledge of the industry and even less ability to judge good competitive ideas and real consumer value."

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