Larry Kramer

The state of the economy isn't the only reason advertising revenues have dropped for traditional media. In fact, the movement of display advertising to the web isn't taking that much at all. It's more about a dramatic shift from traditional advertising to direct marketing, which used to be mostly direct mail. Now, it's search engine marketing. Jack Myers has been a long-time observer of the advertising world, producing a newsletter that keeps tracks of trends in the industry. One of his latest has some pretty startling information about the industry in general. Advertising's share of the total marketing spend of companies has dropped 12% over the past decade, from 34.9 to 30.6 percent. Meanwhile, direct marketing, which now includes search advertising, has gone from 10.1 to 22.8 percent of every dollar spent marketing products.