• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, November 18, 2001

Jupiter Media Metrix released projections, reported by Sharpermedia, that predict B2B online advertising will suffer a 10.2% drop this year before rebounding next year and growing an average of 37% annually after that.

The report says that B2B online spending will drop to $500 million (down from $600 million last year) before rising steadily to $2.4 billion in 2006. Meanwhile, Jupiter projects that overall ad spending will still rise in 2001, to $5.7 billion for the year.

Even at a 37% rate of growth, online will only comprise 8% of the B2B advertising market by 2006. Rudy Grahn, the report's lead analyst, points out that "even if an online publication can get a huge share of the audience, they cannot depend on that to translate to a huge amount of money compared to their offline presence." Grahn says that the economies of online advertising will never resemble those of offline methods—they will pay for themselves, but the revenues may not be there.

Read more here.