Recent reports show that online advertising spend is holding up much better than previously predicted.

A new report from ZenithOptimedia suggests that global internet advertising will grow by 10% in 2009 and also forecasts online adspend to achieve a 15.1% share of world wide advert expenditure by 2011.

The predictions from the Publicis Groupe-owned media agency are up 1.5% from previous estimations in April of a 8.6% growth in 2009. Furthermore, by 2011 online advertising is projected to make up 15.1% of overall advertising spend, an additional increase in forecasts from 2008 when it online ad spend was predicted to make up 10.5% of overall.

The growth is predicted across in various online portals but particularly in search marketing, where a 20% increase in forecasted. In addition, display advertising is predicted to grow 3% and an online classified growth of 1.8%.

The recent launch of Microsoft’s search engine Bing and the ever increasing usage of Google are suggested to spur further expenditure in search marketing spend.

ZenithOptimedia also forecasts that offline media such as newspapers will continue to decrease. The newspaper ad market is suggested to continue to shrink, it said, every year over its forecast period, falling to 22.7% below its 2007 peak in 2011.

Source: Brand Republic