eMarketer has a stat-filled story today outlining advertising spending by small to medium-sized enterprises (SME). It’s quite heartening – if you add up website, email marketing, keyword search and banners, online ad spending is a strong second place in overall ad spend for this category, behind only the Yellow Pages. According to the study, done by The Kelsey Group, online will capture 16% of a $22 billion spend, or $3.52 billion. The study goes on to say, however, that online will average only 2% of the total US advertising spend of $230 billion, or $4.6 billion (larger advertisers are only adding in another billion? Huh?!). Everyone counts differently on this metric, eMarketer says online ad spending will grow from $6 billion last year to $6.9 billion in 2003.
i have never been able to trust eMarketer’s reports. they’re more of a research aggregator — they take other people’s numbers and slather on some topline analysis.
Problem is, like you’re seeing here, different studies aren’t generally comparable without understanding the underlying methodologies. And that, well, that’s hard — too hard for even a company like eMarketer, who’s job you would think is to understand just that.