The online ad market will grow unabated

Microsoft-Yahoo deal or no, recession or no, the online ad market seems to be growing unabated. Wired has an interesting piece on this, including an interesting metric based on consumption time versus advertising dollars spent:

And there’s room for a lot more growth, analysts say, considering that by most accounts, the Internet accounts for less than 10 percent of all U.S. ad spending but more than 20 percent of the time Americans spend consuming media. Ad spending on television - roughly 40 percent of the total - is about even with its consumption time. But the share of ad spending in newspapers and magazines exceeds their consumption time…thus, the Internet is likely to continue taking dollars from newspapers and magazines - even more so if an economic downturn reduces overall ad spending.