Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

The choices, options and fragmentation of the online market has put pricing pressure on web portals like AOL and Yahoo!, along with newspaper sites like the Washington Post and the New York Times for their online advertising revenue.

As recent statistics have shown, AOL ad growth has declined from its heady 40 percent for the last few quarters, down to 16 percent. While online ad growth for the Washington Post dipped to 11 percent in the second quarter, in contrast to last year's 36 percent.

"People are still buying display ads, but they are buying them elsewhere and for less than if they bought them from AOL or Yahoo!," said Jupiter Research analyst David Card.

We've talked at thealphamarketer for some time on this reality eventually happening online, as fragmented markets will put this type of pressure on the portals and some large content sites.

The ability to target web users across numerous niche web sites enables advertisers the opportunity to go beyond the general audience attracted to general news sites, to get a much better return on investment and in many cases lower costs for their ads.

Some of this has been the motivator behind the rush to buy up ad networks and exchanges recently so the portals can offer some inventory at lower rates.

While this is a concern for all the huge, general information sites, I would think it really has to be a concern for the newspaper industry which has made its survival dependent on ad-supported content offered on the Internet.

For niche sites this will continue to be a strength for them, as advertisers continue to search for targeted, responsive consumers who want to see their ads.

See my series on Portals are Still Growing Ad Revenue, What's Going On? to get a more indepth analysis of what is happening.