comScore’s Gian Fulgoni is also something of an economist,
and shared some heartening news for the search marketing gurus attending the Search Insider Summit here. Reviewing some of comScore’s proprietary tracking data, Fulgoni said it appears that the
economy â€" and the ad spending recession â€" “has bottomed out.â€
That’s good news, because if Fulgoni is right,
then we may be poised for an upswing.
The big wildcard continues to be consumer spending, which was a big part of the catalyst for the growth over
the past decade, but which has hit the breaks during the current recession. So before search marketers â€" or any marketers, for that matter â€" begin uncorking their bottles and hoisting a
few, they should consider a couple of other data points that Fulgoni shared from comScore’s database.
Among other things, he showed data
indicating that consumers are drinking more (10%), and smoking more (16%) because of the stresses of the economic downturn.
“Some people are
drinking, some people are smoking more. There are all kinds of negative things going on,†Fulgoni quipped. Hey, at least the so-called “vice categories†appear to be enjoying a
boom.