• by Masha Geller , November 19, 2002

Despite the usual “there is a pot of gold at the end of the interactive rainbow” opening keynote yesterday morning, @dTech New York is shaping up to solidify its position as the leading conference of the online advertising industry. The sessions are informative, the exhibit hall is packed, and there’s definite enthusiasm in the air – a welcome change from years past.

Some of the hot topics are, of course, CRM, surround sessions, dayparts, reach and frequency, and paid search and hats off to show organizers who’ve assembled a great roster of speakers to offer their opinions.

Speaking of R&F, a new study released today dispels the myth that an online advertising campaign reaches duplicate audiences between various publisher sites. In fact, the opposite is true, according to the "Reach Across Sites" study, conducted by the Atlas Institute, the research arm of Atlas DMT. The new study reveals that online advertisers are unlikely to reach the same person with a campaign across multiple sites.

After analyzing 58 client campaigns, the Atlas Institute found that advertisers with greater reach are getting more people to see their ads online, but rarely are they reaching the same consumer on multiple sites.

The study found that for advertisers with low-reach campaigns (targeting 1-10 million unique users), 96% of the users see an advertiser's ads during a given month on one site. Only 4% see an advertiser's ads on two sites. For advertisers with high-reach campaigns (targeted to 10 million or more unique users), 84% of users see ads on one site, 13% on two sites, and 2% on three sites.

What does this mean to advertisers? Atlas says that it’s worth noting that the more inventory an advertiser buys from two websites with significant user overlap, the greater the chance will be for duplication of reach across sites. For example, buying fixed placements on both ESPN.com and FoxSports.com might generate higher overlap levels. However, in most cases today, advertisers are buying small percentages of any given site’s inventory, and as a result, most advertisers observe very little duplicate reach. Unlike broadcast television or popular print media, for advertisers to reach greater numbers of their target audience online cost effectively, it is a safe strategy to increase the number of sites they advertise on, without fear of excess duplication.

The study will undoubtedly be discussed in more detail at the show today. I’ll keep you posted.