• by September 21, 2009

For most of the history of digital media, there’s been hand-wringing about the disparity between online usage and the amount of money spent on advertising in online, a gap that was put this morning by News Corp.’s Jon Miller as 3 to 1. In other words, advertisers are only spending a third of the money they should, given the amount of time people are spending in online.

But, Terence Kawaja, managing director of GCA Savvian Advisors, has a different take. That the gap, rather than closing, is actually widening, as people spend more and more time on social channels, which are harder to monetize.

Pointing to some eMarketer stats from a few years ago, Kawaja noted that eMarketer under-estimated the amount of people that would be on Facebook in 2009, which currently stands at 300 million. But, at the same time, the company over-estimated spending, saying that marketers would be spending $4.2 billion in social channels. They’re not.--Catharine Taylor