Online Job Revenues Grow... but not this much!
Borrell Associates has released a report claiming Online Job Ad Revenues have tripled.
Having been head of corporate development at HotJobs, and cognizant of the fact that there are only six $10+ mm job boards today, I simply dont see how this could possibly be true.
The Newspaper Association of America shows a total growth in Newspaper recruitment spending (offline and online) of $433 mm through the first 9 months of this year, and Morgan Stnaley's Publishing Handbook 2006 asserts a 10.3% growth rate in total help-wanted spending at the newspapers in 2005.
Further, Morgan Stanley's estimates, which seem a lot more reasonable / in-line indicate online spending grew from $1.3 bn to $1.7 bn in 2005 while total help-wanted spending grew from $5.8 bn to $6.9 bn.
Other CEOs in the business I've blackberried this weekend find Borrell's number, while welcome if true, a bit boosterish and incredible.
I've e-mailed Kip Cassino, the report's author, for more data than is available in the skimpy Executive Summary, so stay tuned for more...
Posted by marc at January 29, 2006, 06:54 PM
Comments
Thank you for your skepticism, and for the opportunity to respond to it. Kip Cassino has been traveling, so I thought I'd respond on his behalf.
We face frequent skepticism for our online advertising numbers. It usually comes from traditional media observers who just can't see what's happening on a local level. For instance, Borrell Associates estimates for online advertising overall tend to be quite a bit higher than Jupiter's, Veronis Suhler's, and Price Waterhouse's.
There's a reason. We count "local" with very granular detail. Unlike other companies that look at the national picture, add up what's happening with Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs and others, we have a unique database of local media operations that tells us much, much more than anyone can see from a high-level national perch.
Our database includes online ad revenue figures from more than 2,200 local media companies that report their revenues directly to us. It's confidential, and used for benchmarking purposes. That database allows us to look into any local market and see almost exactly how much all newspaper Web sites, all TV Web sites, all City.com sites and others are making on Internet advertising.....and how much they're making from online recruitment advertising.
In short, we're counting the thousands of Indians one by one. And they add up to a helluva lot more than anyone realizes.
One more thing you should know. The growth is not attributable to the established recruitment sites such as Monster and CareerBuilder. It is attributable mostly to the new job boards that entered the market in 2005. There were hundreds of new boards -- perhaps thousands -- that went from getting $0 just a year ago to $100,000 or more last year. It all added up to tremendous growth in this segment.
I invite you to visit our website at www.borrellassociates.com and click on the "WebAudit" tab to learn more about our methodology. Mr. Cassino, our research director, has been in the business for a few decades, having been research director for companies like Scripps and Knight Ridder. He knows his stuff, and we are lucky to have him.
Thanks again for the opportunity to respond.
Gordon Borrell, CEO
Posted by Borrell on February 1, 2006 10:59 AM
Post a Comment
If you have a TypeKey identity, you can Sign in to use it here.
