• by October 3, 2000

About an hour ago, the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers held a press teleconference to discuss the release of the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report/Second Quarter 2000 Results. The outlook, according to the report and the presenters, couldn't be more positive.

"When you take a look at the numbers," said IAB Chairman Rich LeFurgy, "the overwhelming conclusion for the online advertising marketplace is it's still alive and well."

The total revenues for the second quarter of 2000 came in at $2.1 billion, according to the report and although the IAB is not in the projection business, LeFurgy said the rest of the year is likely to see healthy growth - Q2 2000 saw a 127.3% - $1.2 billion - increase over the same quarter last year. Accordingly, the first half of the year indicated that the full year 2000 revenues are on track to reach the $8 - 10 billion range.

Not surprisingly, the big web properties are getting stronger, LeFurgy said - nearly 90% of revenue is Q2 came from the top 50 publishers, and most of those deals were CPM- based buys.

LeFurgy said CPM deals are still very strong (44%), and hybrid deals (at 46%) were a significant component. The percentage of performance-based deals (at 10%) has inched up, but "it's still the vast minority of the marketplace," LeFurgy said. Of all those, banners are still the most popular format at 50% (down slightly from the first quarter of the year), followed by sponsorships (27%), classifieds (4%), interstitials (3% - same as last quarter), Email (2% - down from 3% in Q1) and keyword searches (1%).

When asked about email going down, LeFurgy said the number is not an indication of advertiser interest in the format, but rather the total actual revenue earned from it. He said email advertising is getting an awful amount of attention because of its targeting ability, but even though these buys tend to be targeted, they tend to be low dollar amounts.