The online advertising business is showing signs of recovery after the dot-com bubble burst about five years ago. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers, there was some $2.7 billion worth of Internet advertising done in the fourth quarter of 2004.
That tally is an all-time quarterly high since the IAB began tracking this business years ago. The estimate for calendar year ’04 is that more than $12 billion was spent on Internet ads, which significantly outdistances the $7.2 billion in ’03.
Projections are also good for ’05, with the current year slated to surpass the record-setting ’04 performance. Indeed, the IAB reports that assorted major clients have decided to increase their investment in online advertising fare.
Furthermore, the nature of what they’re investing in goes far beyond the still common banners and pop-up ads. From Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” Web site via Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami, to varied examples in the iWork feature that appears regularly in SHOOT‘s ScreenWork section, content is being created to attract prospective customers to Web sites. And in many cases, that content is keeping visitors on those sites for longer stretches of time.
As evidenced by iWork selections so far this year, that content has also become prevalent overseas. The menu ranges from the silly–such as TBWA, London’s “Fruity Mouth”-themed Web spots used to help launch Skittles Gum in the U.K. (directed by Tim Godsall, whose stateside roost is Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles)–to the poignant, embodied in an Appealnow.com campaign that exposed alleged abuses by traffic wardens in Britain. The latter, a darkly humored Internet campaign, was directed by Eden Diebel (of Great Guns, London, and greatguns: USA) for London agency Nitro.
Research shows that Americans on average are spending some 14 percent of their media time online. That number has steadily increased, building from zero percent 10 years ago.
