Online advertising is still seeing strong growth, while other categories remain relatively mixed, two ad industry researchers showed this past week.
Internet display advertising rose 17.3 percent to $9.76 billion as the migration of marketers’ ad budgets continues to head towards targeted, digital media, TNS Media Intelligence reported this week.
Full year performance followed the same basic patterns laid down in recent quarters. In 2006, display ads increased its share, accounting for 6.5 percent of total ad spending, up from 5.8 percent a year ago.
These are all the more notable given that the top 10 advertisers of 2006 spent a combined $18.73 billion, a drop of 2.8 percent versus the prior year, though that’s mostly due to falling ad spending by carmakers.
Advertising expenditures for newspaper websites increased by 35 percent to $745.5 million in Q4 versus the same period a year ago, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America. The increase represents the 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for internet newspaper advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.
The full year was similarly strong. Online newspapers saw their ad spending jump 31.5 percent in 2006, reaching a new high of nearly $2.7 billion. Spending on newspaper sites accounted for 5.4 percent of all newspaper ad spending in 2006, NAA found.
TNS illustrates the contribution the online units of newspapers further, noting that newspaper advertising as a whole fell 2.4 percent to $28.6 billion. The category is largely driven southward by local newspapers, which saw expenditures for their print editions fall by 3.3 percent to $24.06 billion. TNS also reported that national newspapers received $3.4 billion in spending, a rise of 3.3 percent.
Overall, TNS said total 2006 ad spending gained 4.1 percent to $149.6 billion as compared to 2005