Study Shows Boom in Online Ad Spending

Employment advertisers spent over 41% of their first-quarter advertising expenditures online, badly hurting local newspapers, according to DoubleClick Inc. First-quarter expenditures totaled $28 million for the sector.

Computer and office equipment and stationary advertisers devoted 16% of their ad dollars to online media, primarily affecting magazines, the report continued.

Publishing and media attracted new users to their Web sites by allocating 15.5% of their total ad spending of $479 million to online advertising.

Retailers spent 15% of their ad budgets, which total $3 billion, online during the quarter. And travel, hotel and resort advertisers spent 12% of their total $788 million budgets online during the quarter.

“Conventional wisdom has it that most advertising spending has been one or two percent of the total online advertising budget,” said Doug Knopper, vice president and general manager, online advertising solutions, for DoubleClick, in a statement. But the results show that “key categories are actually spending much more significant portions of their advertising budgets online.”

DoubleClick also reported that television has recovered from the ad slump faster than any other medium, gaining share from magazines. Local TV news enjoyed a 9% increase, Hispanic TV nearly 7%, and Network TV almost 6%.

The study combines data from Nielsen Monitor Plus and AdRelevance. The report was commissioned with Nielsen//NetRatings.