• by January 30, 2001

As you've probably heard by now, Disney yesterday became the latest media company to slash its online operations, saying that it will close the Go.com website, resulting in 400 layoffs.

What got my attention was the widely quoted statement from Disney head Michael Eisner, who indicated that Disney still believes in the net, but - ready for this? - "The advertising community has abandoned the Internet."

Perhaps, Mr. Eisner hasn't been paying attention.

According to every reputable research and data tracking establishment out there, larger, more established companies are increasing their online ad spend.

Just this week, an AdRelevance study showed that large companies - with quarterly sales of $500 million or more - have increased their weekly online ad impressions by 17% during Q4 of 2000, to 37 million. They also purchased an average of 135 million impressions during the quarter.

There's more proof of the Internet's viability as an advertising medium out there, but I only have a minute.

Disney announced its entrance into the Internet business in 1998, when it acquired Infoseek and said it would construct its own Web service to compete with Yahoo! Inc. and America Online Inc. In January 2000, Disney backed off its grand plans and the site relaunched in September as a place for visitors to find entertainment news and plan vacations. It never made enough of an impact as such.

Advertisers abandoning Go.com does not equal advertisers abandoning the Internet. Even though Go.com ranked fourth among Internet portals, behind Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, according to Media Metrix's figures for December, advertisers are simply more careful about how and where we spend our clients' money these days.