Online ad spending overtakes newspapers for first time

San Francisco - Online advertising for the first time has overtaken spending on newspaper ads in 2010, according to a study published Monday.

The report by eMarketer said that online advertising spending would rise 13.9 per cent to finish the year at 25.8 billion dollars, while newspaper ad spending was projected to drop 8.2 per cent to 22.8billion dollars.

"It's something we've seen coming for a long time, but this is a tipping point," Geoff Ramsey, chief executive officer at eMarketer, said in the statement. "The bad economy has actually accelerated the shift to digital advertising."

The research company said that total advertising spending in the US would reach 168.5 billion dollars this year. Online spending next year was forecast to rise 10.5 per cent to 28.5 billion dollars, while spending on newspaper ads would decline 6 per cent to 21.4 billion dollars.

-- The Nation 2010-12-21

... but in Thailand it will be a long time before online ad spend overtakes print. I recall the last AC Neilsen Thailand report indicated online accounts for less than 1 per cent of all ad spend in Thailand - whereas television, radio, newspapers, cinema, magazines, transit and outdoor are all more popular. Sure, more advertisers will move online but just look at the number of affiliate and linked ads on some of Thailand's most popular English language news websites and you'll see for yourself that many publishers (but not all) in Thailand are struggling to make money from online operations.

Disclosure: I work for a print and digital publishing company in Bangkok.