Internet Ad Spending Will Be Slower Than Expected
Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) — Internet advertising spending in the U.S. will be lower than expected this year and next, putting pressure on Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp., according to EMarketer Inc.
EMarketer plans to cut its forecast for 23 percent growth in 2008 by "a few percentage points," said analyst David Hallerman. The New York-based research firm had predicted almost $26 billion in ad sales this year. Hallerman said his estimate for 16 percent growth in 2009 is "also probably too high."
Spending on Internet ads grew 18.9 percent in the second quarter, according to a preliminary estimate from Karsten Weide, an analyst at market researcher IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts. That growth would be 7 percentage points lower than the rate in the year-earlier quarter, he said. Without the slowing economy, sales would have increased more than 20 percent, Weide said.
