Digital Design Blog

Where to Spend $735 Million Dollars Online?

On Monday Avenue A | Razorfish released its 2008 Digital Outlook Report, an annual report helps marketers, publishers, advertisers and others in the internet industry understand trends in digital spending and consumer behavior. It contains rich insights ranging from the future of search marketing to social media.

The highlight is Jeff Lanctot’s look at how Avenue A | Razorfish spends nearly $1 billion of our clients advertising dollars online. In 2007, our firm had $735 million in digital media billings that were distributed across more than 1,800 web properties. This is more than double the number of properties — 863 — that we placed advertising on in 2006. Clearly, spend moved away from a handful of portals and toward vertical properties and search engines, especially entertainment websites and community-focused properties.

This trend further reinforces our view of the consumer landscape in last year’s Digital Design Outlook and Digital Consumer Behavior Study where we found a new class of “connected consumers” that was participating more broadly and deeply than we had previously thought.

The media has started covering the report in detail see both Advertising Age and News.com. Now Guy Kawasaki weighs in on his blog How To Change the World. Choice quote:

“The report is stuffed with useful information and challenging thoughts that will change a thousand PowerPoint presentations. The material is so good that I’m surprised that the Avenue A folks are letting me post the report in its entirety, so download it before they change their minds.”

You can register for the report here, listen to a podcast here, and obtain more commentary from the report’s executive editor Jeff Lanctot on Jeff’s blog. Moreover, graphics that illustrate details of Avenue A | Razorfish’s $735 million digital spend are available on Flickr.