You and everyone else in the world has heard about the huge drop in the online publicity market: profits dropping, companies are pulling back, people are understanding how hard it is to advertise online. Hold on: that’s 2001.
Ah, Those Dot-Com Days
You probably recall that time as the dot-com bust. It was hard for all of us, everyone who placed their hopes on unsure ventures, but in a sense it couldn’t be avoided. There were too many gigantic promises being claimed on a whole ton of shifty technology that wasn’t so stable, so a natural correction was inevitable.
But then, after that, people decided far too hastily that online marketing in general was dead, which meant the bottom dropped out of the developing marketplace that was remaining. This fundamentally allowed Google to slide in and pick up gigantic chunks of the marketplace, which allowed them to become far more dominant than any other company.
How Online Advertising Came Crawling Back
Slowly, the market crawled back, matured, ad agencies and SEO companies flourished, and a new honeymoon began again with online advertising. People didn’t make all the same mistakes as before, though.
Hop ahead to 2008/2009 and the world finance crisis. Advertising spots dropped dangerously. Ad budgets were slashed. And when a company, trying to keep its head above water, murders its marketing budget, what goes first? Newspaper buys? Television spots? Probably not. Try ‘search engine optimization’ and web-based advertising.
Are We Screwed Anew?
To the recent observer (or the writer who doesn’t get the whole story), this looks like a heavy drop in online marketing. But where many people saw, for the second time, the repeated crash of an industry, anyone who did a little more research could see that this simply wasn’t the case.
The facts are that advertising online experienced a drop like every other sector, but the place people are going to get their content remains the internet. Just because advertising sank doesn’t mean people ran away from the internet in huge amounts. The opposite took place.
Everyone is Moving Online
Really, as time passes, we’re finding even heavier downfalls in print circulation and television ratings. And now books are facing attack from new ways of viewing content, like Amazon’s kindle. Apple might release a brand new product made only for web browsing and online content. People are without a doubt going online for their stuff.
This signifies advertisement online is only going to increase as more opportunities for monetization get bigger. So while there has been a little crash in the online ad market, and sometimes it’s seemed quite severe, there are detailed reasons for it that have nothing to do with whether or not the market for online advertising is feasible or not.
Now is the Most Opportune Time Imaginable
We are currently in a down period. Traditionally solid ad buyers have pulled back their online ad purchases, costs to advertise are lower than they’ve been in a while, and still each day the analytics, the SEO Agency, doing an excellent job—each of these things is on the rise.
Are you going to be a business that lies low during a recession, waiting for proper conditions before doing anything? Or are you constantly looking for advantages, constantly trying to see where the market is going and getting in while you can, when the times have never been more ideal to build a customer base and learn the market?
Don’t be confused by the sudden emergence of a ‘huge decline’ in ads online. Look at the 5-year plan, know where it’s going, and move forward with success.
