• by March 5, 2001

By Adam Bernard

On day two of the Jupiter Media Metrix show in New York last week, Olivier Beauvillain, an analyst with Jupiter Research, spoke about online media in Europe. For the year 2000, ad revenues in the U.S. were up at $5.3 billion, while in Europe they didn't even reach one billion, topping out at $0.9 billion. According to Beauvillain, this is due to an overall pattern in Europe of spending less on advertising.

Europe produces fewer direct marketing campaigns and fewer television commercials, so it would only make sense that there would be less money spent on online advertising.

Another factor would be that Europeans are spending significantly less time online than Americans are. Time spend online in the U.S. is double to triple that of Europe.

There is also fragmentation when it comes to the web in Europe. There are American sites, American sites that have European versions of their American sites, and European sites.

That being said, Beauvillain still felt that there will be a significant growth in online ad revenues in Europe, saying that in 2005 the U.S. will be at $15.5 billion (a little more than triple what they're at now), while Europe will be at $5.2 billion (which is more than five times what they're currently at).

One medium that has been highly successful in Europe is Interactive Digital TV (IDTV). IDTV isn't the whole web on a person's television, but provides access to e-mail, and commerce. Beauvillain said this has been very successful in terms of transactions, which is probably due to the fact that it's more like direct marketing.

Another hot prospect in Europe is that of the wireless web. Right now only 3% of wireless phone users take advantage of this feature, but it's thought that by 2005, 97% of wireless phone users will have some form of the wireless web.

That being said, Beauvillain noted there is less media cannibalism in Europe, and they're not really worried about one medium taking over and destroying another.

- Adam Bernard may be reached at adambernard@mediapost.com