U.S. Internet advertising revenue climbed in the fourth quarter in spite of the poor economy, but the growth rate was sluggish compared to previous years, according to an analysis released Monday.
The report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said that revenue from online ads — which companies like Google and Yahoo heavily rely on — totaled $6.1 billion in the last three months of 2008.
That marked an increase of $154 million, or almost 3 percent, from the same period in 2007. Back then, Internet advertising was up 24 percent over the previous year.
In the most recent quarter, revenue from search ads, which make up the largest segment of the online advertising market, rose 13 percent to $2.8 billion. Revenue from graphical “display ads,” the second-largest segment, fell 4 percent to $2 billion.
Sherrill Mane, senior vice president of industry services for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group, said any growth at all was a positive sign for an industry that is starting to mature while coping with the recession. David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, called the year-over-year growth “remarkable.”
“It speaks to the fact that the vibrancy of the Internet is still there,” he said.
For the full year, online ad revenue totaled $23.4 billion — up $2.2 billion, or a bit less than 11 percent, from 2007.
The report said revenue from search advertisements rose 20 percent in 2008 to almost $10.6 billion. Display ad revenue rose 8 percent to $7.6 billion.
Though still a small segment within the category, digital video ads — such as those you might see when watching a TV show on Hulu — were a bright spot, more than doubling in 2008 to $734 million from $324 million in 2007.
About 10 percent of all money spent on advertising in 2008 went toward ads on the Internet, according to U.K.-based advertising company ZenithOptimedia. While that is still a small portion of the total, it rose from 8.6 percent in 2007, while the money spent on newspaper and magazine ads declined over the same period.
After the report from the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers was released, digital media research company eMarketer lowered its 2009 estimate for U.S. online advertising revenue to $24.5 billion from a prior expectation of $25.7 billion. That would still represent an increase of about 4.5 percent — stronger than what the industry posted in 2008.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More