• by Paul Gough , November 19, 2003

I promised myself I wasn't going to do another online holiday shopping story anytime soon.

The estimates run fast and furious beginning 'round about Columbus Day, and they don't stop until just around the holidays. And then, of course, there's the aftermath, when everyone tells you how well the sector did. So when I set out to write that column two weeks ago, I had every intention of keeping my promise. I wasn't going to mention another holiday prediction, at least unless my boss told me I oughta. But then I happened upon a holiday spending forecast that I had to share. It comes from New York-based eMarketer, which a lot of you know. I've discovered that when Geoff Ramsey and his analysts speak, I better listen.

Ramsey, who spoke Tuesday at the Advertising Research Foundation's annual Business Intelligence Forum, always has a great presentation. (If you haven't seen it, it will leave you feeling both more knowledgeable and more encouraged about the online advertising industry.) The eMarketer predictions - which Ramsey also gave at MediaPost's Forecast 2004, held in September - were pretty bullish for the new year: Online advertising will grow 10.1 percent to $7.6 billion in 2004. It's a little below the peak of $8.2 billion in 2000 but better than the $6 billion recorded in 2002.

While that's going to be good news for the industry, eMarketer predicts that there's going to be an early present this year, too. This will be the best holiday season ever for the online industry, with the virtual cash registers ringing up $17.7 billion in sales by the time it's over.

That's an increase of 29.1 percent over the $13.7 billion during the 2002 holidays, which itself was a 27.6 percent increase over 2001. It was $5.39 billion in 1999.

It's still a small part of retail sales - fourth-quarter online sales were 1.6 percent of the total retail sales - but it's growing, and growing by a healthy rate.

-- Paul J. Gough