The crisis has yet to reach the online advertising sector, even though many point out that the drop in investment could lead to lower growth for two consecutive quarters, according to a study carried out by eMarketer in the US market.
The research was published after amazon data TechCrunch , the tech superblog, bluntly stated that the recession had set in on the web, pointing out that after analyzing the performance of the Big Four internet companies on the other side of the Atlantic, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.
Although Yahoo!, MSN and AOL have had three consecutive quarters of negative growth, Google, the true King Midas of the Internet, remains stable in the face of the crisis, at the expense of its rivals.
However, even Google, which has the majority of the market share and the highest bids for search terms, has seen its growth slow dramatically from 16% in the last quarter of 2008 to 6% in the first quarter of this year.
Many believe that the US market is weak, leading to a 5% drop in banner ads, and if you graph Google's trend, even the Mountain View giant could end the year in recession.
Emarketer and its analysts do not share this view and assert that although 2009 will be a critical year, we cannot yet speak of a recession.