Magna Predicts Healthy, But Slowing Gains For Online Video, Social Media; Search Continues To Rule

While fellow Magna ad spend forecaster Bob Coen has taken a slightly more pessimistic view of online ad revenue growth for this year, the IPG media firm has separately issued another report with a fairly healthy outlook for digital media through 2009. While Brian Weiser, Magna's director of Industry Analysis, mainly tries to remind the industry that "traditional media never died" and is still thriving, his Emerging Media Forecast (PDF) notes that growth is slowing for social media, gaming and online video in 2009. Some highlights from the report include:

-- Search will grow by 24 percent to $13.8 billion. Search will remain the dominant "emerging" media category, and its growth will slow only slightly compared to this year's forecast of a 26.5 percent gain over 2007.

-- Online video will experience the fastest growth within the emerging media category, seeing gains of 45 percent to $805 million next year. Still, compared to past years, that area is starting to slow, as in 2008, online video is expected to climb 54.2 percent; in 2007, online video gained 67.4 percent.

-- Social media will grow by 37.4 percent to $1.474 billion. But from 2006 to 2007, the social media space grew 141.7 percent, and then is expected to increase 60.8 percent by the end of 2008.

-- Gaming will grow by 27.4 percent to $296 million, mostly from online use, compared to 35.6 percent anticipated growth for 2008 and 51.9 percent in 2007.

-- Mobile will grow by 42.6 percent to $298 million. Still very healthy growth, but this year, Magna is calling for 74.2 percent gains, and 2007 came in 118.2 percent higher than the previous year.

-- Despite the coming conversion to digital TV next February and targeting through cable by Canoe Ventures, "advanced TV" will still have trouble attracting major marketers, Magna contends. Still, it should grow by 13.7 percent to $183 million by next year.

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