It’s no secret that search now represents about half of all
online ad spending. What is surprising, it’s what’s been going on with the other half, comScore chief Gian Fulgoni said during his keynote at the Search Insider Summit here.
“If you look at the growth rate for online display advertising just doesn’t look good,†Fulgoni noted, citing the recent Interactive
Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the fourth quarter of 2008.
While that’s not
much of a surprise either, Fulgoni said that the “rumor of the death of online display advertising†isn’t entirely accurate. Fulgoni showed a comScore analysis of the IAB data
that “peeled back the onion†of that top line date to show that the real hit has been to rich media ad spending, which was down 19% during the fourth quarter.
“The banner actually increased in the fourth quarter,†Fulgoni said, citing an 8% rise in the online industry’s standard static
advertising unit.
Fulgoni speculated that the main reason for rich media’s decline is that marketers are opting for “cheaper
media,†and traditional banner ads are just a bigger bang for the buck.
When asked then why online video advertising continues to rise,
Fulgoni said it likely is because it’s coming off a “smaller base†of total ad spending, and because marketers are more willing to experiment with the emerging medium.