Journalists Love a Crash, But There Isn’t One in Online Marketing
You and everyone else in the world has heard about the big tumble in placing ads online: profits are down, companies aren’t buying ad space, people are understanding how hard it is to advertise online. Just a second: that’s 2001.
Heady Days for Everyone
You probably look back on that famous period as the dot-com bust. It was rough for all of us, everyone who gambled on specific things, but in a sense it was inevitable. There were simply too many profits getting trumped up on a whole ton of shifty technology that wasn’t financially sound, so a bubble-burst was pretty much guaranteed.
But then, once that was finished, people decided far too hastily that online advertising was finished, which meant the foundation collapsed under the small market that was there. This really just allowed Google to slide in and take over most of the marketplace, which meant Google was suddenly ad placer #1.
The Big Re-Emergence
Eventually, the market crawled back, matured, new companies came into being, and a second sort of honeymoon began again with online marketing. Albeit one with much more caution.
Jump forward to 2008/2009 and the world finance crisis. Ad purchases dropped heavily. Ad budgets were heavily cut. And when a company, trying to keep its head above water, cuts its marketing budget, what goes first? Newspaper buys? Television spots? Probably not. Try online search engine marketing and ‘new media’ ads in general.
Are We Screwed Anew?
To the lazy eye (or the writer who doesn’t get the whole story), this looks like a big crash in online advertising. But where many viewed, all over again, the repeated crash of an industry, anyone who looked harder could see that this simply wasn’t the case.
The truth is that the online marketplace for ads experienced a mini-crash like just about every sector in existence, but the final arrival point to read content will be (for some time) the internet. Just because advertisements had a rough go doesn’t mean people fled the internet in droves. Far from it.
Every Day More People Get Their Info Online
In truth, as time passes, we’re coming upon even more gigantic drops in print circulation and television ratings. And now books are finally under fire from new ways of viewing content, like Amazon’s kindle. Apple will probably release an entire new genre of touch-screen product constructed entirely for browsing and online content. People are clearly using the internet for their, well, everything.
This signifies advertisement online is simply going to get bigger as more chances to make money emerge. So while there has been a little crash in ads online, and sometimes it’s seemed quite severe, there are detailed reasons for it that don’t touch on whether the market for online ads is viable (it is).
Why Getting In Now is Fundamental
Times are tough. Large agencies have reduced their online ad purchases, ad rates are very good, and still each day the analytics, the number of white-hat SEO companies, doing an excellent job—each of these things is on the rise.
Are you going to be one of those companies that stays underwater during a recession, waiting for big-time reassurances before doing anything? Or are you constantly looking for advantages, constantly trying to see where the market is going and getting in while you can, when ad rates and the market are perfect for it?
Don’t be gamed by the sudden emergence of a ‘huge decline’ in online advertising. Look at the long-term, comprehend where it’s going, and move forward with success.
