IAB: Web ads drop by 5% in Q1 2009

In the first quarter of 2009, Internet advertising dropped 5%, to $5.5 billion, when compared to the same quarter last year, according to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and conducted by the New Media Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers.


"It's a really tough economic climate, and in a lot of key categories, marketers are retrenching and spending drastically less," said Joe Laszlo, director of research at the IAB. "The Internet is not immune to that."


According to Nielsen, overall US ad spending fell 12% in the first quarter of this year dropping $3.8 billion to a total spend of $27.9 billion.