add bugets move online (continued)

The European Interactive Advertising Association reports that 70% of advertisers plan on increasing their internet advertising budget in 2009 (37% increasing a lot and 33% increasing a little). The anticipated increase in the internet add budget is estimated at 18% for 2009, 21% in 2010, and 15% in 2011.

According to the report, 46% of advertisers think that the budget comes from magazines, 37% think it comes from TV, and 32% think it comes from newspaper adds.

Good news for news: the online add market is growing fast

Good news for news: the online add market is growing fast. At least in India. The World Advertising Research Center predicts the Indian ad market will post an 8% uplift in revenues over the course of the year. And according to an executive at the Starcom MediaVest Group, the internet adspend will grow to take 10% of many brand owners' total advertising expenditure by the end of next year.

Will we see the same trend in Western countries? I’m willing to bet on it, even though DTV, with its capacity to better target more refined classes of users, will be a strong competitor.

The conclusion to this, in my opinion, is that online news organizations need to spend resources on having an effective, tech-savy add-selling department (i.e. unlike what’s happening with the European papers, see post below on geolocalization)

Herald Publications in trouble, offers "stimulus package"

Herald Publications, which publishes my city's weekly free paper, the El Segundo Herald, is in trouble. In their own words, "Herald Publications recognizes that many families and business, including us, are struggling."

As a result, they are offering a stimulus package: any add ran in any of their three South Bay papers will be ran for free in the other two papers.

I'm a bit puzzled by the whole thing, because I would have thought that micro-local papers such as the El Segundo Herald (El Segundo = 16,000 residents) would have been shielded from the add crisis. When you think about it, craigslist isn't that local, as far as really big cities, especially a suburban city such as LA, are concerned. If I want a cheap couch, I'm more likely to find one in the El Segundo Herald classified section than I am to find it on craigslist (on craigslist, I will most certainly find one in Downtown LA, one in Santa Monica, one in Los Feliz, etc, but it will take me much sorting time to find one in El Segundo).

But I guess my instinct is wrong. I mean, how bad is it that a paper has to offer triple the circulation for the price of one in order to lure advertisers?...