• by July 16, 2001

Does it really matter to online advertisers whether people log on to the web via a dial-up modem or a broadband connection? You bet. Plurimus Corporation, provider of online behavioral intelligence, has just released some interesting stats about broadband Internet usage and it looks like broadband users are much more likely to respond to an ad than their narrowband counterparts.

Of the over 3.5 million Internet subscribers Plurimus tracks, 10% use some form of broadband technology (e.g., cable modem, DSL, satellite, fixed wireless, ISDN, and T1/T3 lines) to access the Internet. For the study, Plurimus tracked how broadband and dial-up users responded to two recent ad campaigns by Ford Motor Company and Fox Home Entertainment.

During Ford's May 4, 2001 campaign on the Yahoo! website, Plurimus found that nearly 24 million households - or 41.7% of the U.S. online population - visited the site that day and were exposed to the Ford ad. According to Plurimus, 11,992 of those visitors were intrigued enough by the ad to proceed to Ford's website as potential customers.

Linking online behavior with geographic locations, Plurimus identified that the highest response rate came from households in the Midwest that have broadband access and earn more than $100,000 per year. In fact, broadband users visiting the Yahoo! site that day were 15 times more likely to respond to the ad than their narrowband counterparts.

Yet another broadband-versus-narrowband usage difference was be seen in a recent ad campaign that Fox Home Entertainment ran on the AskJeeves site to promote the release of the movie 'Castaway' on video and DVD.

While monitoring behavioral patterns surrounding the campaign from June 13-18, 2001, Plurimus discovered that broadband households were five times more likely to respond to the ad. Moreover, only broadband users were observed purchasing the 'Castaway' video via the promotion, suggesting that virtually no narrowband users were converted to customers as a result of the campaign.

Survey results have also shown a three-fold increase in broadband users between January 2000 and April 2001 - from roughly 4.1 million to 10.4 million households.