The argument has been made that a recession would be bad for Web advertising, and it certainly could be if advertisers decide to cut spending across the board, but the Silicon Valley Insider's Peter
Kafka says new data from Nielsen//NetRatings supports the counterargument that despite tough economic times, financial advertisers still have to spend to attract new customers--and it's cheapest to
attract new customers via the Web.
In its monthly release on U.S. Web advertising, the same four mortgage/financial advertisers showed up in the list of top ten Web spenders in August, as in
July. In fact, three of the four increased their ad budgets--including Countrywide Financial, which financial analysts say is in danger of imploding. August, by the way, was the first month of the
so-called mortgage crisis.
So, asks Kafka, are Web analysts wrong about a credit crunch affecting Web spending? Not necessarily, he says: Countrywide, for example, didn't really start to
implode until mid-August, when Merrill Lynch told investors to sell its stock. Since, the company has "sucked down" some $11.5 billion on its credit lines, and started firing employees last month. So,
next month's numbers should be even more telling--but so far, the news, as reported by Nielsen, hasn't been too bad.
Read the whole story at Silicon Valley Insider »
