Shift to online advertising partly responsible for slow down

Good article today by Joe Mandese on MediaPost.com today talking about the shift from traditional advertising to online advertising and its effect on ad spending.

Advertising economist Jon Swallen actually thinks that this transition is a huge reason for the decrease in ad spending and that it really doesn't have as much to do with the economy as we might think.

"Some of what we are seeing continues to reflect that shift from traditional to digital media," said Swallen, senior vice president-research at TNS Media Intelligence.

"I think we are starting to realize that our expectation for what constitutes normal growth in advertising has been diminished from earlier in this decade," Swallen said. "We used to think of 3% to 4% growth as our birthright. Now 3% may be the high end of what we can expect."

Makes sense to us. People are terrified of the unknown and don't forget that the internet is still largely unknown to many people. The internet is so easy to track as far as ads, if you haven't already, we suggest doing some testing.