Internet Adoption and Advertising Expenditures on Traditional Media: An Empirical Analysis Using a Panel of Countries

The Internet can affect advertising expenditures through various channels. This paper quantifies the relationships between Internet adoption and changes in advertising expenditures on traditional offline media types. I use a panel of 11 years of data at the country level that contains information on advertising expenditures by medium and Internet penetration for more than 80 countries. I find that increases in Internet penetration are negatively correlated with changes in advertising expenditures on newspapers, magazines, and television, but I do not find conclusive results for the correlation between Internet adoption and changes in advertising expenditures on radio.