The Wall Street Journal had a great piece yesterday in its Marketplace section on the widening gap between display ads and simple search text ads, which looks like a failed case of “catch up” for Google Inc. rivals.

According to the article, the power of the word is still outpacing the flash of display, especially in a sluggish economy with advertisers pulling in their horns a bit, much to the chagrin of Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp, which dumped a ton of money into better display ad technology, only to receive less than half of the market share of online advertising (display ads forecast at a flat 21% of 2008 overall spending, while text search ads are forecast at 41%).

What it basically comes down to is measurement…marketers are becoming much more savvy about how they measure ROI on their marketing efforts, and this look into the evolution of online marketing is particularly illuminating. Most big marketers understand the power of measurement and tend to invest in methods that give them the highest ROI. That says something about how reliable the online display ads have been–obviously not the performers Yahoo and Time Warner were hoping for.

But even little marketers can take something from this…since a lot of businesses are pulling in their horns, and buying less keywords on search campaigns, that leaves a hole you can jump into to lower your own costs in the text search arena.

The numbers are compelling; I would recommend using your online advertising budget carefully with proven strategies that work, and stick with simple text search ads when money is tight.

Read the entire article: HERE