Net Users Spend 7.6 Hours per Week Online.

In its new report, Online Advertising Essentials, eMarketer estimates that Internet users in the US spend an average of 7.6 hours online per week. Is your company properly targeting this audience?

“The pronounced and permanent shift to the Internet makes online advertising far more fixture than fad,” says eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman. “But for advertisers to connect with the Internet audience requires both a fuller understanding of this group’s online and offline habits and attitudes and an understanding of how interactive marketing works to create indirect responses among its audience.”

Estimates for how much time US Internet users spend online, on average, range from 261 hours to 702 hours per year. eMarketer’s estimate, based on its analysis of all the relevant research data, stands at 394 hours per year, or 7.6 hours weekly.

The report also covers the issue of how to effectively measure online advertising — direct response or branding. DoubleClick research from last fall indicates that 82% of US marketers cite building brand awareness as an online advertising objective, up from 75% in the spring. And 69% of the same group mention acquiring new leads and customers as an objective.

Other topics covered in the Online Advertising Essentials report include:

Why, despite the continued recession, the growth in the number of online users, increasingly with broadband access, is leading to a rise in ad spending in the US

What the demographics of Internet users say about how to advertise to them

Why online advertising’s indirect effects often can’t be gauged by Internet-only metrics such as click-through rates or impressions

How cross-media consumption by consumers will likely lead to a change in the way companies allocate their marketing budgets

What industries and specific companies advertise most online

Which Web publishers get the most advertising business

To view charts CLICK above on ‘More Images’.