Display Advertising in 2008

Clickz has an update on the state of online display advertising.

"Display growth dropped from around 16 percent in Q1 2007 to 8.5 percent in Q1 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Meanwhile, the Interactive Advertising Bureau weighed in with its overall online ad revenue tally, courtesy of PriceWaterhouseCooopers; spending growth decreased from 26 percent in Q1 2006 to about 18 percent in Q1 2008. "

I think the most interesting element of this is the following:

"As the current oil market affirms, lower demand can lead to lower prices, especially when it comes to a commodity. Like it or not, display ads have become just that. "The eCPMs across our business have gone from about $2 down to about 40 cents, and I imagine within the next year, two years, it will continue to plummet," said J. Moses, co-founder of Hearst's UGO Entertainment at the recent UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York. Moses and others blame the increasing efficiencies and refined targeting enabled by ad networks, along with surplus social media ad inventory for declining CPMs. "No one would have predicted that better tools would produce a lower yield for publishers, and that is exactly what has happened," he said"

All of these targeting technologies that the industry has proffered over the years to increase efficiency and increase yield have done just the opposite. 2009 will be a year of change, methinks.