But others argue that the growth of performance-related advertising is as much as to do with the maturing of the internet as it has with the slowdown in the US economy. Web users are just not as interested in clicking on banner advertisements as they used to be. This fall in popularity has increased criticism of the banner ad model. Search engines and web directories are among those looking to boost their revenues from advertisements. Web directory Yahoo has already warned that the year ahead could be tough.
Most customers find the sites they want by clicking on search engines or web directories.
These directories take non-paid for submissions by companies for inclusion within their directories.