NEW YORK – Online advertising saw strong spend growth globally in the third quarter, with spend up 10% YOY, excluding Asia. This represents strong growth in spite of global economic challenges worldwide. Paid search advertising grew 7% and display grew 21% year-over-year. Retailers saw the largest growth in advertising expenditure, increasing search budgets by 22% compared with the third quarter 2010.

These figures are released quarterly by IgnitionOne, a leading provider of performance marketing technology and services managing more than $1 billion in online advertising.

Key findings in IgnitionOne’s Q3 report:

• Search advertising spend remains solid in Q3. In Q3, total search spend was up 7.2% YOY driven in part by more consumer search activity (impressions up 22%). Europe saw 20% spend growth YOY compared with 7% for the US. Growth in retail, finance and auto was partially offset by modestly lower YOY spends in travel. Retailer spend was particularly strong, growing 22% year-over-year.
• Performance-focused advertisers continue to increase their display advertising budgets (spend up 21% YOY), namely for inventory sold via real-time bidding (RTB). This form of display advertising is similar to search in that it is bought in an online auction marketplace, and therefore highly measurable with spend able to be quickly scaled up or down. CPMs on RTB display are also declining (-23% YOY) as more inventory floods the market, increasing its cost-effectiveness.
• Google’s online advertising dominance grows further. The company’s share of search advertising rose to 81.6%, and its display advertising platform experienced 184% growth year-over-year. Higher quality search inventory, the product enhancements in Google’s Ad Exchange and new highly effective ad formats form the basis of Google’s dominance and continued growth in market share.
• Yahoo/Bing alliance shows little impact on the search engine landscape at one year anniversary. On a year-over-year basis, Yahoo/Bing’s effective cost-per-impression has declined -22.8% mainly due to declining CPCs (-18%) and declining CTRs (-5.9%). While the Yahoo/Bing alliance has recently introduced ad format changes (Rich Ads in Search) and other innovations, these efforts have had little effect in attracting new advertiser dollars.

“Online advertising has stayed strong despite global economic challenges,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “Marketers are looking for high ROI in this economy, and are increasingly turning to efficient advertising formats like performance display and search. This has resulted in strong advertising growth YOY; which, coupled with increased online activity from consumers, should yield a solid Q4 for publishers and marketers alike.”

IgnitionOne’s complete Q3 Digital Media Report can be downloaded here.

This report is the latest in a series of reports from IgnitionOne reviewing trends across the online advertising landscape. Previous quarterly reports can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/ignitiononeresearch

About IgnitionOne
IgnitionOne is the world’s first closed loop Digital Marketing Suite, offering multiple solutions to improve online performance within a single interface. Solutions include ad management and optimization (search, display and Facebook), cross-channel attribution and website conversion optimization.

IgnitionOne currently powers more than $20 billion in revenue each year for some of the world’s leading online marketers, including General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, Fiat and advertising agencies such as MRM Worldwide, CyberAgent and more.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.

BURLINGAME, Calif. and LONDON – For the first time, spending on digital/online advertising and marketing will overtake print in 2010, according to new projections from Outsell, Inc. In an industry crossover event, companies will spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies, from search engine keywords to webinars, while committing $111.5 billion to print methods such as newspaper and magazine ads. Overall, U.S. spending on advertising and marketing will increase in 2010, but by just 1.2 percent to $368 billion.

Outsell’s “Marketing and Ad Spending Study 2010: Total US and B2B Advertising,” forecasts spending, share, and growth for five media types—online, events, print, TV/radio, and PR/other—and methods used within each, from social networking to mobile/wireless marketing.

“Advertisers are directing dollars toward the channels which generate the most qualified leads and most effective branding. As they emerge from the recession, they need more accountability, and they’re spreading their spending over a widening set of options,” said Chuck Richard, Vice President and Lead Analyst, Outsell.

Among findings:

Print magazine advertising will be up 1.9 percent to $9.4 billion despite the popularity of online channels.
Methods generating the highest B2B ROI are topped by advertisers’ own websites, followed by conferences, exhibitions and trade shows; direct mail; search engine keywords; and e-marketing/e-newsletters.
B2B advertisers see cross-media marketing as most effective; 78% combine three or more major marketing methods.
51 percent of B2B marketers rate Facebook as extremely or somewhat effective, followed by LinkedIn (45 percent), Twitter (35 percent) and MySpace (25 percent).
Outsell surveyed more than 1,000 US advertisers in December 2009.

For the report, with publisher recommendations: http://www.outsellinc.com/store/products/912?refid=pr912.

ABOUT OUTSELL, INC.:

Outsell is the only research and advisory firm focused on advancing the publishing and information industries. Our international team provides independent, fact-based analysis and actionable advice about competitors, markets, operational benchmarks, and best practices, so our clients thrive and grow in today’s fast-changing digital and global environment. Outsell tracks and analyzes over 7,000 information industry companies, as well as the needs, habits, and spending patterns of advertisers, enterprise information buyers, and end users. Outsell’s headquarters are in Burlingame, CA, with offices in London and in Cambridge, MA. See www.outsellinc.com.

PALO ALTO, Calif. – PubMatic (www.pubmatic.com), a global ad revenue optimization company that works with over 5,500 online publishers, unveiled a strategic European expansion that will dramatically increase ad revenue for both European and U.S. based online publishers. Through a partnership with Europe’s Improve Digital, PubMatic now provides localized sales, service and support in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, whose publishers cover 90% of Western European Web usage.

PubMatic’s patent-pending algorithms ensure that large online publishers generate the most money from their advertising space by predicting and deciding in real-time the ad network that can best monetize each impression. The expansion allows PubMatic to instantly provide a top-tier local sales and service team for European-based publishers and ad networks.

“Europe is the next frontier for ad revenue optimization. There are a lot of European publishers leaving a ton of potential ad revenue on the table at a time when improving monetization is so important,” said PubMatic Co-Founder and CEO, Rajeev Goel. “Just as we were first to unveil a publisher-focused optimization solution in the US, we are also first in providing the same opportunities to European publishers.”

U.S. based publishers and ad networks will also experience significant gains from PubMatic’s European presence. PubMatic has seen that, on average, 20-40% of total traffic to large U.S. based publishers comes from European visitors. PubMatic’s expansion will produce an even larger and stronger base of international ad networks that will provide noticeable ad revenue lift from ads served to European visitors. Similarly, U.S. ad networks that work with PubMatic will have more opportunities to secure publishing customers in European countries.

“Improve Digital has a built-in base of European publishers and ad networks, so our partnership with PubMatic makes absolute sense,” added Janneke Niessen, Co-Founder and COO of Improve Digital. “We’re creating a real opportunity to help a huge stable of publishers increase revenue and efficiency by combining high level service, local knowledge and revenue optimization technology.”

About PubMatic

PubMatic is a global ad revenue optimization company that provides online publishers with a full service solution to manage and monetize non-premium ad inventory. PubMatic’s patent-pending algorithms ensure that online publishers get the most money from their advertising space by deciding in real-time which ad networks will pay the most for every impression. There are currently over 5,500 large and medium publishers working with PubMatic. Find out more at www.pubmatic.com

About Improve Digital

Improve Digital helps premium publishers to realise their revenue potential through innovative solutions for unsold inventory and revenue management. Their holistic yield platform helps publishers and networks to boost revenues and efficiencies. Find out more at www.improvedigital.com

NEW YORK – SMBs in North America spent upwards of $7.5 billion on online advertising during 2008, driving a third of the total NA online advertising market. While growth in 2009 is expected to be fairly flat, SMBs will likely continue to fuel online advertising spending growth for years to come, according to AMI’s new study, “North America SMBs Transition to Online Marketing”, which provides a perspective on SMBs’ usage of various advertising media, web hosting, e-commerce and related tools and technologies.

“Only 1 in 5 NA SMBs currently advertises online—most advertise in local yellow pages and newspapers and magazines,” says Deepinder Sahni, SVP with AMI-Partners. “However, SMBs are starting to adopt online advertising, with some verticals such as manufacturing and professional services more involved than others.”

“Local print media is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon as the majority of SMBs generate revenues locally, thus making local branding, awareness and sales enablement a key requirement. But the current economic environment is forcing business owners to take a hard look at the effectiveness of their media budgets and seriously consider including more targetable media options.”

The report also shows web site deployment has been very strong; 7 in 10 SMBs already have a web site. But few have gone ahead and leveraged their online presence into meaningful business. Less than 25% have deployed any form of e-commerce, and even fewer have deployed credit-card processing mechanisms.

Yet, SMBs expect business generated via online channels to increase by 10% year-over-year. “Clearly, helping SMBs reach their desired financial goals by optimizing their online presence remains a vast untapped growth opportunity,” says Mr. Sahni. “Service providers need to reach out in a very targeted manner and communicate crisp, believable financial outcomes for SMBs that will invest in a well defined e-commerce roadmap.”

Related Study

Challenging economic times typically produce a flight to quality. This truism also applies to the North American SMB market. As the economic crisis wears on, SMBs are becoming increasingly concerned with retaining current customers and finding new customers in more targeted and cost-effective manner. This report—“North America SMBs Transition to Online Marketing”—addresses how SMBs are using the Internet in the current environment to aide in these activities.

This report addresses the Internet from the view of service providers, online advertising/search providers, and e-commerce/webhosting providers. It begins with higher-level market opportunity, then moves to changes and impacts to the market, and then provides data and analysis pertaining to Internet access, website usage, and usage of online marketing media.

This report provides critical information to decision-makers in the following areas:

* The types of marketing and media SMBs are using to engage their customers and prospects
o How are SMBs advertising as the economic downturn wears on? Where does online marketing and media play in the larger SMB advertising portfolio?
* How SMBs are using their websites
o What are the goals of SMBs when they deploy websites? How do they view e-commerce?
* How SMBs access the Internet
o How is the cable vs. telco war playing out in the SMB market? Who is winning, who is losing?

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com or visit www.ami-partners.com.

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and “go-to-market” solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.