Traditional Advertisers Continue to Lead Online Advertising Growth.

Nielsen//NetRatings shows that traditional advertisers continued to carry the growth of online advertising through the first quarter of 2004. Among key industry segments, traditional companies topped the fastest growing advertisers within their particular group.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance, AT&T Wireless Services increased ad impressions online by more than one thousand percent. Online ad usage by pharmaceutical company Schering Plough jumped 737 percent, while MBNA Corporation rose 471 percent over the last year. DaimlerChrysler and Safeway, Inc. grew 461 and 440 percent, respectively within their segment groups.

“During the soft economy over the last few years, traditional advertisers with bigger budgets have been the ones to experiment with the Internet as part of their overall ad campaign strategy,” said Charles Buchwalter, vice
president of client analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.

“The Internet continues to be a dynamic and ever-changing medium, providing advertisers with broad offerings from advanced rich media formats to the simplicity of search-based text ads,” continued Buchwalter. “In the past two years blue chips who took a chance at online advertising learned what worked for them, backing out of some areas and investing in others.”

Internet usage among key indicators has increased year-over-year, providing advertisers with more opportunities to reach their target audience (see Table 2). Overall, Web pages viewed jumped 26 percent, while average time spent online rose 11 percent year-over-year. Sessions per person increased six percent since last Q1 2003.

“There remain pockets of usage growth that advertisers and marketers can take advantage of to reach their target audience. Increases in Web pages viewed and time spent online confirm that surfers continue to have a healthy appetite for content,” added Buchwalter.

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