Summary: For several years now, the IAB(Internet Advertising Revenue Report), tells us that either online and mobile advertising continues its strong growth from one year to another. The question is: Who will really benefit from it?
Findings released today(through 2011) shows that there was a good grow by 21.9% between 2010 and 2011, and over the past ten years the arrow is pointing upwards(except for a small slip in 2009).
Total 2011 fourth quarter revenues were $1.52 billion (20.4%) higher than the fourth quarter of 2010, and $1.15 billion (14.7 %) higher than the third quarter of 2011.
If we consider the other reports, the other method for content sharing are divided in this way: If on one hand search and display remains the largest online advertising revenue format and continue to lead ad formats, on the other hand we have a decreasing of either display and classified ad format, but it is not a huge changes.
Mobile emerges as relevant category these year, rising from 641 million in 2010 to 1.6 billion in 2011 (+149%), but its presence in the cake is still marginal (personally I have my doubt that publishers stand to benefit from mobile).
In my opinion the most interesting chart is this:
As you can see in the chart above, the widening gap between performance and CPM is widening. If the 2 models in 2006 had the same net revenue values, the performances are today at 64% against 32% CPM.
Advertiser today, due to the crisis, want to risk as less as possible when it comes to invest their money in online publisher, and give them all the risk:
In a nutshell, Less CPM and more Performance means, less banner bought for branding and more banner bought for CPC/CPA.
Also, consider that today banners perform about half than before, … they get less click than before, and here we come to the paradox: online advertising is growing, but they are not certainly publishers to take advantage of it.
Since 2008 I do not see any excitement in publishing online, despite of the published reports on advertising by IAB: All the money invested in advertising on the web, end up in the pockets of someone else.
