BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
25 Nov 2008

eMarketer’s revised projection, benchmarked against the latest Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, puts online ad spending at $25.7 billion in 2009. That is only 8.9% over the $23.6 billion that will be spent in 2008. 

But when you compare their latest figures with their month-old data, it appears that eMarketer is losing its marbles.  Let’s see the latest stats:

Comparing this to previous video estimates, from October 6 2008:

Let’s look at eMarketer’s projections then and now, and interestingly, it seems the 2008 figure has been revised upwards!

In fact, when you break down their earlier projections (from October 6 2008) you will see that in fact, their projections for 2008, 2009 and 2010 have been increased but their projections for 2011, 2012 and 2013 have been decreased.  This does not make sense if they are saying that the economy is playing a role.  If anything, if the economy were to be blamed, then you would see lower revisions for the short term but higher long term revisions due to online media’s bullish secular trends.

Of course it’s worth adding that this is all after they admitted that their methodology was off and reduced the figure from $1.35B to $550M.  But I digress, or not.

This, to me, shows that eMarketer is losing some credibility in the space, frankly.  I’d be interested to see their explanation.  I am all ears.