"Back in 2000, every entrepreneur who started a Web content company carried the same PowerPoint slide. It charted the astounding growth of U.S. online advertising, from next to nothing in 1995 to $6 billion in 1999. Then a dotted line shot up to the projection for 2005 -- typically the $16.5 billion figure supplied by New York City-based Jupiter Communications. If a website could just attract visitors, the slide argued, advertising dollars would follow.
Venture capitalists and big portals bought in, placing sky-high valuations on sites that promised large audiences. Of course, the market for traffic dried up as online advertising slumped from $8.2 billion in 2001 to $6 billion in 2002. But here's the kicker: Web content deals are on the rise again, and Internet ad spending should reach $12 billion this year, meaning Jupiter's once-ridiculed forecast wasn't far off the mark. -- Om Malik,'The Return of Monetized Eyeballs', Business 2.0
I've said it before and I'll say it again: virtually every penny spent on online advertising before approximately 2001 was a total waste. The growth of the Internet in the last five years as a truly organic interactive medium has now made everything from simply transplanting traditional-style advertising to online channels, to all the new media approaches, highly desirable - but there is still a huge disconnect between the online community and the old-line marketing and advertising communities that needs to be bridged. And perhaps one example of that disconnect is Malik's perception that a shortfall of almost 30% and billions of dollars is "[not] far off the mark." In short, the metrics of the online experts remain a mystery to a significant proportion of your target advertisers.