Internet advertising to dominate all but TV in the near future?

January 13, 2003 2:32 PM

Internet advertising to be second only to TV ads in the near future? A Slate dialogist predicts that within 1,000 days (a little under 3 years) the aggregate Internet advertising spend will exceed that for each of the other media (except for television). More than radio, more than newspapers, more than magazines. Believe it?
posted by MattD (7 comments total)

That's possible, if we credit to advertising some reasonable percentage of all auction and listing fees paid to eBay and its competitors, search results fees, the costs of maintaining promotional websites, etc. If we strictly count rate card invoices from content providers, I don't think the number could possibly be close.

Main reason is that most every Internet reader is still also watching TV and reading magazines and billboards, listing to the radio, and getting direct paper mail ... and many ad buyers will still perceive general interest advertising on the Internet as duplicating their traditional media buys, rather than supplementing them.

Internet advertising will, however, complete its domination of "research" advertising -- it will be the dominant way to advertise any good where the main question someone asks is "where can I buy this" or "where can I get the best price for this"?
posted by MattD at 2:44 PM on January 13, 2003

Believe it?


Nope.

I believe it will happen in approximately...25 years. When the majority of the population in internet-friendly countries is of the "new" generation. I.E., when all of the baby boomers are dead.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:49 PM on January 13, 2003

Believe it?

Ma$$ Haughey does.
posted by the fire you left me at 2:53 PM on January 13, 2003

Even if it IS true, the money will be going to the same groups (Disney/AOLTW/Sony/GE/Etc), as they will have purchased the fifteen internet content properties that garner 99% of the traffic.
posted by jonson at 3:01 PM on January 13, 2003

Is this "spend" counting just the cheques cut by the company to marketing clowns, HTML coders, website hosters, etc etc, or is it including the cost to the observer of the advertisement, and his/her ISP and up the line?

As with spam, a substantial proportion of the material costs of popup and banner advertising is paid by the recipient. Whereas offline, most of the costs the recipient pays to receive advertising are purely time.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 7:08 PM on January 13, 2003

First off, the Slate writer talks about eight versions of AOL and six versions of Netscape.
AOL added a couple of versions with no real improvements. And there's certainly been very few improvements in browsers. So he loses some credibility there.
One of the more interest improvements have been those that kill pop-up ads. The new Mozilla is getting it built in. And Earthlink includes a pop up killer in its latest version of software.
The real test is how many sites can survive with advertising only. Very few.
posted by stevefromsparks at 9:11 PM on January 13, 2003

I side with the cynic:

"But, again, there is tremendous promise. As you hint, that promise will likely be fulfilled as the Internet becomes an enabling mechanism for other advertising media. If it continues to try to sell itself primarily as a "push" medium, its promise will be limited and its cultural impact will be negative. Like direct mail, it may become a needed part of marketers' plans, but, also like direct mail, it will cater to the 1 percent of humanity who can stand the stuff, alienating the other 99 percent. (Why do you think they call it "spam"?) People currently resent most Internet advertising as intrusive and annoying and a betrayal of what they'd hoped the medium would be."

If your advertising is gnat-like, I will think of your company as a gnat. (Not that slick, conniving and deceptive is any better.)
posted by micropublishery at 12:05 PM on January 17, 2003