• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, November 19, 2008

Borrell Associates raised eyebrows recently with its bleak prediction that online ad spending will top out next year. But following a brief radio silence, industry thought leaders are responding--and in some cases, challenging the research firm's prognosis.

"There is definitely a softness in the market that we haven't seen in years," said Clark Kokich, CEO of the Microsoft-owned online ad agency Razorfish.

"Online ad spends are now a significant part of the media mix, and they're not going to be immune from scrutiny," Kokich added. "If consumer spending continues to decline, clients will have to rein in their spending."

David Hallerman, senior analyst at research firm eMarketer, is slightly less pessimistic. "Next year will be the slowest year of positive ad growth since '03, but we do see growth," Hallerman said.

Tom Bedecarre, CEO of San Francisco-based AKQA Inc., is similarly bullish on the topic of next year's ad spend. "What we would anticipate is a slowing but still net positive growth," Bedecarre said. "The very large advertisers still have a very small position (of the budgets) in online, and as they spend more that will continue to balance off the overall ad spend decline."

To that, Kokich said: "The continued shift to digital has already helped mitigate the impact, so we have yet to see a decline in absolute dollars, but it's too early to tell whether that will hold up next year."

Next year will be the first year since the start of the century in which some components of interactive advertising will show little or no growth, according to the 2009 outlook report released by Borrell Associates.

The study predicted that some segments are even expected to experience measurable decline. Overall changes in interactive spending in the recast projection are dramatic--a drop of one dollar in every seven. But the changes are not evenly spread across the board.

Standard format ads have been downgraded 9%, although the local portion is up 11%. Instead of the growth originally foreseen, total e-mail marketing has declined by 18%.

Paid search, meanwhile, is off by 17%, despite 18% growth in local paid search. Spending for streaming audio/video is up 5% because of strong local performance.

Spending by local advertisers--which has grown at a frenetic 47% this year--is expected to diminish to a paltry 7.8% in 2009.

Hallerman, among other analysts, takes issue with Borrell's focus on local online advertising as an overall measure of national ad spending.

"They are looking at local markets--small and local business are being impacted more," Hallerman said.

Charlene Li, founder of consulting company Altimeter Group, said: "I can totally understand from a local perspective. The question is whether that reflects all ad spending."