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.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More