Even with new services, new websites and other interesting elements surfacing on the internet, there seems to be a continuous decline in the online advertisement expenditure. In the most recent report released by IDC, the current online advertising spending for the second quarter of 2009, has declined by 5% to 13.9 billion, whereas the same quarter in the year 2008 saw an investment of $14.7 billion. The United States, one of the biggest online markets has also seen steady decline in the online advertisement investments to to $6.2 billion from $6.6 billion from last year.

According to Karsten Weide (IDC)

“We think the industry will continue to see losses in the third and fourth quarters, but the growth rates – or the loss rates, if you will – will eventually begin to improve. However, we also believe the industry may have to wait until mid-2010 until it sees real growth again.”

There has been a continuous decline in the online advertising trends since the beginning of this year and companies have been posing continuous losses, as compared to last year. Internet big-hitters such as, Yahoo, AOL and other internet start up firms are now feeling the heat of the decline in the expenditure. Till now, the online display advertising expenditure has fallen 12% and the online classified advertisements have fallen by 17%, thereby giving the classified websites a real hard time.

However, according to IDC, even with the great slump in the online advertising, the good news remains that, the downturn in spending has infact put a breaker to the exponential growth being witnessed in the IT sector.

According to Karsten Weide,

“We don’t see the steep decline in the growth curve anymore. I think it’s a safe bet to say we have probably hit bottom. Things aren’t great but at least they aren’t getting any worse anymore.”

Via New York Times & IDC.