• by January 29, 2001

Large companies increased their weekly online ad impressions from 30 million to 37 million during the fourth quarter of 2000 but the online advertising market is still dominated by small and mid-size companies who tend to be dot-coms, according to AdRelevance, a Jupiter Media Metrix company.

The latest AdRelevance findings reveal that although large companies - companies with quarterly sales of 500 million dollars or more - buy more sites than their smaller counterparts, they are still buying fewer ad impressions on average. According to the data, large companies purchased an average of just 135 million impressions in the fourth quarter of 2000, compared to the 167 million impressions bought by small companies - companies with quarterly sales of 75 million dollars or less.

Amazon.com bought the highest total impressions of any large company - 6.2 billion. Large companies bought an average of 72 sites while mid-size companies -companies with quarterly sales of between 75 million and 500 million - bought just 50. Also, the report found, dot-com companies of all sizes bought more impressions than traditional companies of equal size while mid-size dot-coms led the way with an average of 453 million impressions purchased during the fourth quarter of 2000.

"Market weary sites have been hoping for the larger, big budget advertisers to jump into the deep-end of the online advertising pool, but the latest AdRelevance data indicate only a gradual increase in online advertising from large companies," said Charlie Buchwalter, VP of media research for AdRelevance, a Jupiter Media Metrix company. "Dot-coms have been guiding the online ad industry since its inception and the mid-size dot-coms, whose customers are online, are continuing to lead."