Recession? Not in the Ad Biz - that's the headline of a story I just came across at Conde Nast's Porfolio.com, that reinforces what we reported yesterday about a Forrester Research study showing that the online advertising business continues to hold its own despite disruptions in the general economy. Author Willow Duttge wrote "Sure, the U.S. could be in a recession.

Consumer confidence is declining. Food and gas are so expensive it’s more cost-effective to stay home and diet. But the advertising business (of all things!) is actually benefiting from the painful spectacle of the traditional media landscape fragmenting into shards. The internet is continuing to oust broadcast TV, print, and radio from their once-secure position as the automatic repository for ad dollars, and the complex environment that’s been rattling the advertising and media industries could actually function as an economic buoy during these hard times."

Online advertising continues to 
fly above the economic clouds

Duttge added "Clearly there’s pain; but it’s not being evenly distributed right now" then went on to give examples of the ongoing boom in web advertising. That is the key point - even in hard times there are sectors that do well and we happen to be fortunate enough to be in one that is positioned much better than others. It is easy to get caught up in all of the despair and predictions of doom that are heard every time the general economy heads into a downturn, but those who are old enough to have lived through these cycles many times before know that things will rebound and that there are always opportunities if you know where to look for them. We think those who are looking at the Internet (and the long term value of domains) right now are looking in the right place. 
(Posted May 2, 2008)