The front pages of Yahoo, AOL and MSN are now sold out on big display ads for months in advance, according to a WSJ story yesterday. Websites offering car-buying tips are booked so far in advance - - up to 18 months in some cases - - that they are selling ads for next year in a process similar to the way network TV spots are sold.

"We have a supply issue," says Joanne Bradford, chief media revenue officer at MSN told the paper.

The surging demand is allowing big rate increases at the largest portals, the prime beneficiaries of the growth. Yahoo said last month that prices increased by "double digits" in the third quarter from a year earlier, while AOL says prices for some ad units have increased as much as 20% since January.

It's all about the tremendous growth of the medium - - and how it has also spilled over to mobile wireless devices. "Most mediums have only been considered viable advertising mediums upon reaching mass distribution. This was true for radio, TV, cable, and Online. When I think back to the early days of internet marketing, we were trying to get the ball rolling with less than 20% of the population using the internet regularly, (and we called "once a week" heavy access!). Today, 70% of the population has a mobile phone and/or some other sort of wireless device," Sarah Fay, president of Isobar U.S., the online media buying division of UK-based Aegis, tells RBR/TVBR.

[Editor's note: be sure to catch her interview with us in the January RBR/TVBR Solutions Magazine.]

MSN says it currently charges between several hundred thousand dollars and 1 million for a prime, 24-hour ad spot on its home page. That's up from about 25,000 to 50,000 four years ago.

By contrast, the average price of a 30-second TV ad for last February's Super Bowl was 2.4 million, while a full-page color ad in People magazine costs 228,275, said the paper.

In the first half of 2005, U.S. advertising spending online increased by 26% to 5.8 billion, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Growth for the entire ad market was 4.5%, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

RBR observation:
Like the story mentioned, advertising backlogs also occurred during the dot-com boom in the late '90s, with online sales peaking at 8.1 billion in 2000. This time around, however, the spend bears fewer markings of a "land grab" and more evidence of better measurements and research backing the planning and buying. A longer and more proven data trail, if you will.