TV stations' Web businesses fared better than newspapers' declining digital efforts in 2009, but TV is still behind in overall advertising share of media dollars. TV stations grew their share of local online advertising from 8.3 percent to 8.7 percent, according to a new Borrell Associates report released by the Television Bureau of Advertising. The only other medium to increase local online share was pure-play Internet companies such as Local.com, ReachLocal and Yahoo, which claim more than six times the local online revenue of TV stations.
This year, TV station online advertising is expected to grow 21 percent to nearly $1.4 billion, doubling last year's 10 percent growth rate. After this year, Borrell is calling for growth to moderate to 13 percent in 2011 and 7 percent in 2012. While growth is robust, for most stations, online revenue is less than 5 percent of a stations' total gross revenue. As far as audience is concerned, TV Web sites still lag their newspaper counterparts. In the 95 markets measured by The Media Audit, TV sites led in 22 markets, while the major daily newspaper led in 73.
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