In order to name the best online publishers in ten different categories, we had to decide what an online publisher was. First, know that we limited our selections to the more than 8,000 ad-supported
websites, since they are the ones of interest to MEDIA Magazine’s readership of online planners and buyers. Naturally, you’d expect to find the big-name offline (read: old-line) publishers with web
franchises—the newspaper, magazine, and entertainment conglomerates. Then there are the newly established Internet brands, principally the portals and search engines (it’s getting hard to tell them
apart, as they acquire or morph into one another). We’ve also included Amazon and other shopping sites under the definition, even though most of the advertising on these sites is not being done with
conventional ad units. To arrive at our choices for the top five publishers in each category, we took into account a survey of MediaPost members (which asked respondents with first-hand
experience to rank the sites based on service, ad units, serving, measurement, and negotiation); the most relevant quantitative data (see chart pages 26-27); the quality of the site content; and the
extent to which each site has been an innovator or leader in the evolution of online advertising and the medium in general. This is our first-ever ranking of online publishers, and the third in our
latest series of special issues (“Best of the Net” ran in November and “The Best Interactive Agencies” appeared last month). We invite your feedback and expect it will help us to improve our report
the next time around. — Allan Hoving
