Online Turns In Best Ad Quarter, Year Since 2001

Although it has yet to match the exorbitant increases of years gone by, Internet ad spending is poised to turn in its best year since the market for online ad inventory crashed in 2001, according to a variety of estimates and forecasts released this week.

On Tuesday, two leading online ad trackers - the Interactive Advertising Bureau/PricewaterhouseCoopers and TNS Media Intelligence/CMR - unveiled especially strong third-quarter and year-to-date estimates for online ad spending that essentially put the medium on track to achieve the 15 percent annualized rate of growth predicted on Monday by Bob Coen, senior vice president-director of forecasting at Universal McCann and the ad industry's de facto scorekeeper. If that holds up, it means that Internet ad spending will expand at about three times the rate of growth of the overall ad industry in 2003, based on Coen's forecast.

Based on CMR's tracking, however, the 13.8 percent rate of growth for Internet advertising through the first nine months of 2003 would be only about twice the rate of the 7.0% expansion of the media CMR tracks.

The IAB/PwC, meanwhile, said its preliminary third-quarter estimates peg Internet ad spending at $1.745 billion, the highest Internet ad sales quarter since the third quarter of 2001. According to the IAB, the third quarter of 2003 represented a 20 percent increase over the third quarter of 2002, but only a 5 percent increase over the second quarter of 2003.

Meanwhile, Universal's Coen predicted that the rate of Internet ad expansion would slow somewhat in 2004, but would still climb at a double-digit rate of 10 percent. That would be enough to continue building the Internet's share of overall ad spending, which is forecasted to rise only 6.9 percent in 2004.

Based on Coen's estimates, the Internet would account for a 2.3 percent share of total U.S. ad spending in both 2003 and 2004.

2003 Internet Ad Spending (Vs. Same Periods In 2002


Universal McCann (Full Year est.):            +15.0% 
IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers (First 9 Months):  +13.5% 
TNS Media Intelligence/CMR (First 9 Months):
+13.8%

Source: Universal McCann, TNS and a MediaDailyNews analysis of data from the IAB and PwC.
Next story loading loading..