Andrew Chen

As far as overall advertising goes, Internet at 8.7% of ad dollars, whereas TV
(local+network+cable) is almost 75%.

There are two ways to look at this:

• Wow, look how far online advertising can grow!

Or:

• Look how insignificant online ads are compared to other media!

It’s really a combination of the two – it’s true that both online ads has a lot of headroom, but when it comes to ad agencies, the total amount of spend going towards this medium is still small compared to everything else.

This is part of the reason why even if you have an awesome website with lots of branding opportunities, it can be hard to move the needle and get agencies interested unless you have massive scale. It’s definitely something to keep in mind if you are building a social media site with no direct commercial intent in order to attract direct response advertisers.

PS. MarketingCharts.com is a pretty awesome site to grab numbers like these!