IAB: Online Ad Sales Still Soaring
Jun 7th, 2007 by Jennifer LeClaire
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $4.9 billion for the first quarter of 2007. The 2007 first quarter revenues represent a 26 percent increase over Q1 2006 at $3.8 billion and a 2 percent increase over Q4 2006 at $4.8 billion.
“The continued growth of online ad revenues clearly illustrates marketers’ increased comfort with the extraordinary vitality and accountability of this medium,” said IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. “It reaches consumers with an unprecedented level of efficiency and measurability that provides marketers with actionable data. And the ever-changing landscape of new platforms and technologies that enrich interactive advertising guarantees that this growth trend will continue.”
“The recent results are particularly impressive when the size of the advertising revenue base is taken into account,” said Peter Petrusky, director, PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Given these results, we may expect continued strong revenue growth buoyed by an expanding broadband subscriber base, which could translate into more users spending more time online and offers a platform for rich media and video ads that dial-up connections can’t render.”
“The continued growth of internet advertising, on top of the record growth of 2006 and despite advertising’s traditional sluggish first quarter, demonstrates the growing significance of interactive advertising to the overall advertising and marketing industry,” added David Silverman, partner, Assurance, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
I always love to see these reports, but are advertisers getting a return from their investment, or are they just throwing money into the Internet pool with great hopes. There’s a saying in advertising that goes something like this: “I know half of my efforts are working. I just don’t know which half.”
Web analytics is helpling companies track their online adveritising efforts. This is part of the ROI-driven approach that we push around here. Of course, there are latency issues involved. That means the customer may have clicked through your ad on Tuesday, but not bought until Friday or even next month. That’s a little tougher to account for, and that’s one place where folks miss it in their quest to calculate conversions.
