Maybe traffic and revenue is booming in other corners of the internet!
Everyone's mileage will vary and, I feel, even more so by country. I'm in the UK and have a pulse on what's happening locally to me and, in general, many couldn't give a damn about webby things and the impending doom and gloom that was predicted for businesses IF they didn't do this, that and the other!
In reality the WWW is now quite mature for many, they know where they want to go to get things and what they want to read, if they're into social many do not even go anywhere else. I actually overheard someone say the other night "You're either an Amazon person or an Ebay person, I'm Amazon!". That really surprised me, why close yourself off to other channels?
So much has changed since 2008, that made a lot of people take a serious life reality check, the incredible amount of pub closures in the UK has been witness to that, in general I feel that many people now have completely different lifestyles, possibly expectations but definitely priorities plus I've watched my own two daughters' attitudes towards many things change enormously.
In my own industry within Europe realworld product sales are up yet Net activity is way down. My products are heavy and it didn't take long for people to suss-out that whist someone the other end of the country may be cheaper, the cost of transportation soon negated any savings. For example my sister's business used to travel all over the country, now they restrict it to a large local region where they can be there and back in a day.
She's one of many who no longer uses AdWords in my trade and I mean probablly several hundred nationally who no longer bother with it since I simply do not see their ads on my pages any more. Ok, maybe they don't want to appear on my sites however they would be slightly crazy when I have more widget coverage than anyone else.
So, what's the answer you are looking for? If it's light, postable, easily delivered by courier, downloadable or easily collectable, then you're competing with loads of others to get your site ranking well and get ads in front of faces, if you're not in the above then it's going to continue to be a hard slog if all you do is Internet marketing.
How much of the above also applies to the USA I have no idea but I do know this is quite generic across Europe within my trade.
