• by June 16, 2004

Some interesting news coming from AdAge's annual AdWatch conference today.

At the conference, market forecaster TNS Media Intelligence/CMR projected a nearly 16 percent growth rate for online advertising this year. TNS projected more than 14 percent growth for local television and 10 percent growth for cable TV, while network TV ad spending is expected to increase 9.8 percent.

What this will translate into in terms of dollars is anybody's guess. Just getting a handle on the amount of business being done via advance sales in various consumer categories, and broadband video ad sales deals negotiated in conjunction with the upfronts, is challenging enough.

The TNS forecast begs a question though: How much are marketers earmarking for online media programs this year and beyond? What percentage of their overall media budgets is online media? Of course the answers to these questions vary by company and corporate culture, and certainly by product category.

Joanne Bradford, vice president and chief media revenue officer at MSN, bullishly told participants at the network's annual Strategic Account Summit in late March that she wanted to see marketers commit 8-12 percent of their media budgets to online programs. Mmm. Are we getting there yet?

Overall, TNS reported today that U.S. ad spending will grow an estimated 9.3 percent in 2004 to a record $140.3 billion, aided by an improving economy and spending toward the presidential election and Olympic Games. The projection was revised from TNS' original estimate of 7.8 percent. TNS estimated $1.5 billion in political advertising dollars and nearly $1.3 billion in advertising related to the Olympic Games.