• by July 19, 2000

Two weeks ago, despite talk of a dot.com slow down, AdZone Interactive - http://www.adzoneinteractive.com - announced that spending on the Internet has increased a significant 54% from January to June this year from $819 million to $1.264 billion.

Considering that the IAB's official online ad spending tally came to $4.6 billion for the entire year (1999), and several other companies released much lower figures, AdZone was immediately criticized for an overly optimistic approach to forecasting future online ad spending growth.

But that didn't stop them from releasing more figures earlier today, this time for the UK. According to the company website, AdZone derives their numbers by monitoring the top 1000+ web sites 24 hours a day for content, frequency, brand, creative executions, advertiser and date, and their technology (surprise, surprise) provides the most accurate research data in the business.

There's no denying that Internet research and tracking technology is getting better every minute. But could it be possible that this is exactly what Dr. Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, was talking about in his latest ChannelSeven column when he suggested that Internet research should be considered fresh for no more than a month and a half?

I'm open to suggestions on this one - whose research do you trust? Moreover, are these spending figures useful in any way other than quotation purposes three years down the road?

Just in case they are, according to AdZone's June figures, the top 25 websites in the UK received an estimated $42 million in advertising revenue for a total of roughly one billion impressions, with Go.com, food.com, Europe.yahoo.com and mail.yahoo.com taking the top spender slots.