After weeks upon weeks of having constant news of the global financial crisis and the recessions impact on various industries, we set out to examine the impact on online advertising.

It is no secret that the financial sector, automotive, and airline industries have been hit hard by the recession. These three industries have been serious online advertisers for years and competing heavily amongst each other. They also represent a large chunk of the total spend on online advertising. Just surf the web for 5 minutes and you’re sure to see a credit card banner, car banner, or a travel (holiday) banner somewhere. But will this still be the case?

The answer I believe, is No. These industries are desperately trying to rally around cutting jobs and reducing their expenses to just stay afloat. Some of these “Expenses” are budgets that were set aside for their advertising campaigns. There is no way that a company that is in the process of cutting 10,000 jobs will pay premium prices to actively participate in display advertising on major websites. They simply can’t afford it.

My theory is that display advertising on major websites and newspapers will decrease significantly. Large Publishers will be hit hard. But advertising is still the backbone of generating sales for most companies, so online advertising will still be a priority for them. But to what extent?

These online advertisers will focus more on search engine marketing and getting strong conversions. They will spend their budgets competing on their keywords on Google searches for instance, and making a strong impression on people specifically searching for their products. The key word is Targeted marketing. Their online advertising campaigns will ALL come down to positive ROI’s.

To sum it up basically, Display Advertising and premium website buys will decrease while search engine marketing and other forms of highly targeted online advertising will continue to be strong.

The days of spending $50,000 to simply show a Auto Banner on MSN.com with the purpose of only generating strong brand awareness and not a positive ROI are over….for now.