- Will Video Ads Command a Larger Share of the Web Ad Market than Paid Search?

Anyway, yesterday I talked about the potential growth of video ads using the actual growth of search (to read that, click here: Search vs. Video - the Looming War).  For some reason, I did not go all the way and talk about how big video can get and when it will surpass search… so here are some projections to answer not if but when will video surpass search in terms of share of the online advertising pie?

For search, I am using eMarketer’s numbers until 2011 and then adding projections from 2012 to 2020.

For video, I averaged out eMarketer and Forrester’s numbers until 2010 and 2012 respectively, then added my own projections until 2020.  Take it with a grain of salt, but I’d say by the end of the next decade, online video will be larger than online search:

I know you are reading this and thinking I am crazy, which is always a plausible conclusion… but two things to consider:

- These are US figures only, but in the US, TV ads were $57B in 2005 and supposed to be $73B by 2009… so even if web video is - by 2009 - a $2.3B market, its video peer on TV will be about 30x larger… that means plenty of upside for online video ads at the expense of TV ads.

- I am usually conservative: earlier this year I published a post suggesting that online advertising would surpass TV advertising by 2021… that raised some eyebrows, but then, months later, other more trusted folks (ie. people paid to do this full time) did the same analysis not once but twice and were even more bullish than I was… so maybe video will surpass search in 5 and not 10 years.