Online advertising in the US is expected to exceed newspaper advertising in 2010. For the year, online ad spending is expected to rise about 14 per cent to $25.8 billion, while print advertising spending in newspapers is expected to decline about 8 percent to $22.8 billion. Research firm eMarketer includes everything from Google and eBay to the New York Times in its online advertising category.
Online advertising spending will finish the year with a 13.9 per cent increase to $25.8 billion, compared with an 8.2 per cent decline to $22.8 billion for print newspaper ads, New York-based researcher eMarketer said on its website.
"It’s something we’ve seen coming for a long time, but this is a tipping point," Geoff Ramsey, chief executive officer at eMarketer, said in the statement. "The bad economy has actually accelerated the shift to digital advertising." Online ads are typically seen as more reliable, he said, because their effectiveness can be measured, whereas print ads “are often difficult to tie to a measurable financial result.”
Newspapers will end 2010 with a 7.8 per cent gain in online ad spending, to $3 billion, leaving them with an overall drop of 6.6 percent, to $25.7 billion, eMarketer said. Total ad spending in the US is expected to increase 3 per cent to $168.5 billion in 2010, the research company said. Expenditure on newspaper print ads will continue to decline next year by 6 per cent to $21.4 billion, and total online spending will rise 10.5 per cent in to $28.5 billion, eMarketer estimated.
Ad spending on newspapers is expected to continue its decline. eMarketer estimates that print newspaper spending has already been cut in half since 2006, and online has done relatively little to make up the difference. By contrast, total US online ad spending will continue double-digit growth through 2014, when it will surpass $40 billion.
