WEB PORTALS LOST 5% OF online ad dollars last year to narrower content sites and search engines as spending followed consumers across a more fragmented Web landscape.
That's among the key findings in the annual outlook report on digital advertising trends based on 2007 billings of $735 million. Overall, vertical sites accounted for 39% of spending; search, 31%; portals, 19%; and ad networks, 11%.
Underscoring the continuing shift away from portals to more targeted properties, the agency last year more than doubled the number of sites it bought ads on, from 863 to 1,832.
"We're seeing more ad spending being pushed from the head, which is the portal, down the long tail of sites," said Jeff Lanctot, senior vice president of global media at Avenue A|Razorfish. "It's generally accepted now that portal prominence is not as high as it once was." That's also reflected in portal CPMs that increased only 7% last year compared to 30% for vertical sites and 20% on average.
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