NONE: Re: World Wide Web ad revenues
Re: World Wide Web ad revenues
Jim Nail (jnail_at_cmgi.com)
Thu, 5 Sep 1996 14:00:24 -0400
Cliff recently wrote about the Jupiter study of advertising spending
online. One question he raised regarding Jupiter's methodology of using rate
card rates (which we all know are pretty much ignored) is: "So is guesstimating
based on site inspections and published rates the best that can be done?
Is this the same thing done for estimating ad spending in print and
television?"
The answer, IMHO, is yes. In other media, tracking is done and reported on
rate card rates (e.g., Publishers Information Bureau tracking of magazine
spending). Having spent 15 years in traditional agencies, I've used these
numbers to gauge what my clients' competitors are doing relative (the key
word here) to what our client is doing. We know the absolute number is
wrong but there is no way we can know what kind of discount or special deal
our competitors have cut. As long as you compare reported numbers to
reported numbers, you can get a sense of what is happening.
As far as the Jupiter study goes, no one can say that xx million is *the*
amount spent online based on that study. To me that's not really the point
for the internet advertising industry. What is more interesting is the
comparison to previous periods (showing the speed of the growth of the
medium) and the concentration of advertisers and sites getting the dollars.
The critical implication of the Jupiter study is that this is still a very
incestuous business. Our challenge is to break out of these narrow list of
advertisers and attract more traditional advertisers. *As an industry* we
need to work together to demonstrate to traditional users how this medium
impacts end user buying behavior, demonstrate the roles it can play in
complementing traditional marketing and demonstrate the results.
End of soapbox session for today!
Jim Nail
Director of Marketing
CMG Direct Interactive
P.O. Box 7000
Wilmington, MA 01887
jnail_at_cmgi.com
