Online advertiser erupting

Even as the rest of the business world shrivels like a leaky balloon, "little" eZanga grows and grows.
 
With just 20-odd employees and a quiet local presence, the Middletown-based online advertising company's revenue is multiplying at a faster pace than most any company in the Philadelphia region, and Fortune magazine has ranked it as the 15th fastest-growing advertising and marketing firm in the country.
 
In April, it moved into a bigger building and announced plans to add employees over the coming months. In May, it opened a branch office in Norwalk, Conn., to handle rising local demand.
 
In part, this quick expansion is happening not so much in spite of the bad economy as because of it, said CEO Rich Kahn. With advertising budgets shrinking, companies see online ads as a relatively cheap way to spread the word.
 
"What they're saying is they're seeing more bang for the buck with their online dollar than their offline dollar," he said.
 
Still, eZanga is facing -- and so far, overcoming -- some industry headwinds. Internet advertising in the United States dropped 5 percent in the first quarter, the marketing medium's first downturn since 2002, when the Web was still recovering from the dot-com bust. That setback for ad-driven Web sites and services is considered temporary, however.
 
"We're confident that growth will resume as the U.S. economic climate improves," said Randall Rothenberg, the Interactive Advertising Bureau's chief executive.
 
To appreciate how much Internet advertising has progressed since the last slump, consider that total spending in this year's first quarter nearly surpassed the $6 billion that was devoted to online marketing during all of 2002.
 
The Internet hasn't been as hard hit as other media largely because its advertising space tends to cost less and its technology helps advertisers reach the specific people most likely to buy a particular product or services. In many instances, advertisers don't even have to pay unless a person clicks on the commercial message.

Posted via email from Yellow Door Media