Citigroup: Display Ad Market Faltering

Lost in the news yesterday that Citigroup is laying off over 50,000 employees comes another significant statistic: display advertising is declining faster than expected, and marketers are holding back on spending in 2009, according to a new report by Citi Internet analyst Mark Mahaney and relayed by MediaPost.

That means that the online ad market is in dire straits. “October spending in display saw a sharp deceleration from September as advertisers continue to worry about the macro environment,” he said in the article. “Premium, guaranteed advertising, especially, has been highly impacted across all verticals.”

The report said that ad budgets are still shifting from traditional media (mainly print and radio) to mobile devices, performance-based display ads, ad exchanges and search advertising, which is a lone bright spot. “Citi predicts ad exchanges and ad networks to benefit from that trend into next year. Even so, the report noted that publishers complain about too many ad networks claiming to do similar things.”

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