Online Ad Spending Down, But Hope Ahead

For the first time since 2002, during the last ad recession, internet ad spending took a dip, if a modest one, falling 5 percent over the first quarter of 2009 versus first-quarter 2008, to $5.5 billion from $5.8 billion for the year-earlier period.

What makes the online decline somewhat surprising is that so many had come to think that the internet had become so strong as an ad medium that it was impervious to declines.