Gain in online spending, ads served, a mixed blessing?
Internet advertising is continuing to recover, according to statistics released last week, and publishers should be asking themselves if they’re ready to get their share of increased online ad spending.
According to the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet advertising revenue in the United States reached $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 7.5 percent over the same three months last year. That’s also a first-quarter record.
It was the second consecutive record-setting quarter, according to the IAB. The fourth quarter of 2009 set an Internet ad revenue record of $6.3 billion.
Meanwhile, comScore Inc. said U.S. Internet users received a record 1.1 trillion display ads in the first three months of the year. That total is up 15 percent from the first quarter of 2009. In addition, comScore estimates that $2.7 billion was spent on online display advertising (static banners and rich media, only — no video).
ComScore said it’s also seen an increase in online display spending, but it used a different method to compute the figure this year and couldn’t provide a comparison.
The IAB Internet revenue estimate includes search, display (banners, rich media, videos, and sponsorships), classified, referrals and e-mail. The IAB doesn’t break out the amounts in each category in its first-quarter report.
In the comScore report, Facebook ranked first as the top publisher of online display ads (176.3 million, 16.2 percent of the total). Following Facebook were Yahoo!, Microsoft, Fox Interactive, AOL and Google. ComScore said AT&T was the top advertiser (26.3 million impressions, 2.4 percent of the total), and was followed by Verizon, Scottrade, Experian Interactive and Sprint/Nextel.
Although the statistics suggest advertisers are showing more faith in Internet advertising by shifting more dollars into the space, the gain in the number of ads served doesn’t necessarily mean a boon to individual publishers. Granted, it’s risky to match the IAB and comScore numbers, in a broad sense, however, a 7.5 percent gain in revenue against a 15 percent gain in ads served could mean a weaker CPM rate.
And that means online publishers will have to continue working hard to demonstrate the value of their particular audiences to local and national advertisers.
Google loses share of search market, says ComScore
While still way out ahead of the search engine pack, Google’s 64.4 percent April share of market, as reported by ComScore, is considerably below it’s over-70-percent high throughout 2009. In June 2009 Google was reported having slightly more than 74 percent of the search market. The April figure represents a slight drop from the search giant’s 65.1 percent of March 2010 as well. Its YouTube actually lost 7 percent of share from the prior month.
Yahoo sites rose 0.8 percentage points to 17.7 percent, and Microsoft sites gained 0.1 percentage points to reach 11.8 percent of the search market. Both these groups have introduced new site navigation experiences tying content and related search results together. Ask Network captured 3.7 percent of the search market, and AoL LLC 2.4 percent.
Noteworthy gains and losses:
* Mapquest, part of the AoL LLC figure, gained 10 percent market share from March 2010
* Fox Interactive Media in general, and MySpace in particular both lost 23 percent share of search market in one month.
* While Microsoft sites gained 19 percent month over month, Bing actually lost one percent
Here’s the complete ComScore April 2010 report.
UPDATE: Social media can – and does – pay
There’s been much talk, especially among newspaper executives, about whether social media is worth the effort. Many decry its inefficiency as a revenue stream, primarily because users don’t visit a social site with an intent to buy. In fact, one prominent newspaper, a social media pioneer, told AIM that its social sites might have to go because they don’t make money. (See an upcoming CIR for all the details.)
Yet, ComScore has just reported that 20 percent of all online advertising impressions come from social networks. The problem, it would seem, is not so much in the social network idea itself, but rather in the particular social media products, their owners, and their method of growing their social business.
Our first recommendation is that publishers and broadcasters take a long hard look at those who are succeeding with social media and online advertising on their social sites and emulate the best practices they find within. Top performers, in order of rank, are MySpace, Facebook, Tagged.com, MocoSpace.com, Hi5.com, Bebo, Classmates.com, BlackPlanet.com, GaiaOnline.com, and DeviantArt.com.
Another important piece of information is the companies who are advertising on social. Again, in order of rank, the top advertisers are AT&T, Experian Interactive, Ask Network, Sprint Nextel, Pangea Media, Microsoft, Apollo Group, Zynga.com, GameVance.com, and Verizon.
UPDATE: AIM’s Classified Intelligence Report has offered a number of tips and best practices on social media and its monetization. One of the most notable was the lengthy glimpse we gave you into the phenomen of “moms” sites, and this most engaged of online audiences. See CIR 9.22, November 20, 2008. In that same issue is the early notice of what is fast becoming a common model – mixing social with recruitment. Last year’s CIR discussion about Jobvite’s social recruitment platform has been followed by a look at several others doing the same. Creating a local social product in these two niches might well be your most important social move.
Online U.S. video use soars in July
ComScore, Inc. today released July 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, showing that 158 million U.S. Internet users watched 21.4 billion videos during the month, both the largest audience and the greatest number of viewed videos ever recorded.
In July, Google Sites continued to rank as the top U.S. video property with a record 8.9 billion videos viewed, making up 42 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8 percent) followed by Microsoft Sites with 631 million videos viewed.
The top video ad networks, in order of rank, were ScanScout Network, Tremor Media, YuMe, Broadband Enterprises, BrightRoll, Advertising.com, SpotXChange, Break Media, and Nabbr.
In July, 81 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video, for an average of 500 minutes (8.3 hours).
Monetizing mobile ads
Planned job cuts up 31 percent in July
Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting that last month planned job cuts by American employers increased 31 percent to 97,373. This was the first increase in monthly job cuts since January. The news is a bit of a shock: planned job cuts had fallen to a 15-month low during June, when job cuts decreased by 33 percent to 74,393. Still, the July total was 6 percent lower than this time last year.
The data of course is corroborated by the number of visitors to job sites, which according to June data from ComScore, showed a 10 percent growth in unique visitors to career sits over last year for a total of 65 million uniques. CareerBuilder stayed on top, followed by HotJobs and Monster.
Adding up the whole year, employers have announced 994,048 job cuts this year – that’s 72 percent more than the 579,260 job cuts announced during the first seven months of last year. The year-to-date total is now only 230,000 job cuts away from surpassing the 1,223,993 jobs cut during all of 2008.
Challenger CEO John A. Challenger said the July rebound after June’s surprisingly low job-cut total was not entirely unexpected. “We are still a long way from a full recovery. In fact, monthly job cuts are likely to return to levels in excess of 100,000 by the fourth quarter,” he said.
The increase in job cuts during July was mostly due to firms in the transportation industry, which announced plans to reduce 27,954 positions during July – an increase of 400 percent from the 5,587 jobs cut during June.
Layoffs in the telecommunication sector also grew in June – from just 802 in June to 17,601 during July (an increase of 209 percent). Challenger pointed to reductions at Verizon’s land line division which “reflect a shift in consumer demand from traditional telephone service toward wireless-communication options. The hope is that increased hiring in the wireless sector will help offset some of the losses in the more traditional divisions.”
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