There have been plenty of doomsday forecasts about 2009 advertising spending, brought on by the financial crisis. Especially when online advertising, so long on the rise even as print ad revenue fell, started falling too.
Now, Adweek threatens to mess up the picture:
So far, the first months of 2009 aren’t looking as dire as once predicted for the online ad market, according to buyers and sellers. However, many report that business has slowed down, resulting in intensifying pressure on pricing, particularly in the ad networks space.
But the abysmal first quarter that many anticipated — one in which shell-shocked clients either delayed all decision making or went into budget-slashing mode — hasn’t happened, said many industry insiders.
“I was one of the people that thought Q1 would be disastrous, but so far it’s not that bad,” said Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com. While Spanfeller said that business wasn’t exactly going gangbusters, “things have been OK. It’s not the nuclear winter we feared.”
But wait, there is still pain to go around in the online ad world. Check out Silicon Alley Insider’s Jan. 26 writeup of an AdAge story about ad networks:
