Online Ad Revenue Up

Rafael Cohen reports: Think this can move the Dow? According to a report out today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising continues to expand, though it is growing at a slower rate than in previous quarters.

Online ad revenue grew 11 percent from the third quarter of 2007 to nearly $5.9 billion. That's a slight 2 percent increase over the previous quarter's $5.7 billion. The numbers for the first nine months of 2008 also show a 14 percent increase in online ad revenue as compared to the first nine months of 2007.

But these rates show a deceleration of growth that had seen online advertising dollars jump by 27 percent in the first half of 2007 and 37 percent in the first half of 2006.

Analysts think that online ads have a better chance of weathering difficult economic times because advertisers have ways to pinpoint just how effective their ads are when they are on the internet.

But companies like Google and Yahoo who are already suffering through the current downturn, may reflect this new data in their own earnings statements. Especially since the third quarter ended at the end of September, and the economic news since then has only worsened.