• by December 13, 2000

Occupying the top overall online advertiser spot eight of the past nine weeks, leading the retail segment and running holiday-themed ads totaling over half-a-billion impressions each week since October, Amazon.com has become the number one online advertiser thus far this holiday season, according to a report released today by AdRelevance.

Aiming to capitalize on the brand recognition they have built this year, Amazon is focusing holiday online ad efforts on direct marketing appeal, with 70% of the retailer's top ten online ads touting free shipping.

In addition to tilting its ad strategy away from branding ads and toward direct marketing ads during the holiday period, Amazon appears to be putting more wood behind the arrow of its direct marketing ads, with 4 million impressions per direct marketing ad versus 750 thousand impressions per branding ad.

Even though Amazon curtailed online ad impressions in the few weeks before December last year, AdRelevance data reveal that they are showing no signs of abating this year, even as Christmas nears. Last year at this time, WingspanBank.com was the top overall advertiser, while Amazon ranked fifth overall.

Amazon's share of voice on the top five sites it advertises on increased to 20% this year, versus an average of five percent on its top five sites last season (GO, Altavista, MSN, Yahoo! and AOL.com) – suggesting that Amazon is making a concerted strategic effort to dominate on a carefully selected site list.

Amazon is now the number one advertiser on four of the top five sites it advertises on: MSN, AOL.com, Netscape and Juno.