• by January 22, 2001

Online ad impressions in December 2000 increased 21% over the previous month, reaching an all-time high of over 65 billion despite increasing market negativity toward the online advertising industry, according to the monthly AdRelevance Intelligence Report released today.

"Online advertisers approached the holiday season with significant concerns due to the increasingly negative perceptions of the industry," said Charlie Buchwalter, VP of media research for AdRelevance.

"However, the latest AdRelevance data indicate a robust, across-the-board increase in online ad impressions during December," he added. "MSN outpaced the competition by concentrating on the biggest spenders in the online advertising market and appears to be the winner of the holiday season among the ad-supported websites."

The report reveals that MSN and Yahoo! dominate other websites in terms of ad revenue and impressions. According to the report, MSN brought in the most ad revenue during December ($180 million).

According to the report, Yahoo! led all sites with over 7.5 billion ads served -- numbers more than three times their nearest rivals'. The data also shows that Amazon.com led all advertisers with almost three billion ad impressions in December.

Additionally, the report states that Amazon.com led all advertisers in ad spending ($61.8 million). Forty two percent of Amazon's spending was on MSN. MSN received an average of $486,000 in revenue per advertiser (370), compared to $105,000 for Yahoo! and Netscape.

Also, Geocities was first among sites ranked by number of advertisers with 1,507. Yahoo! ranked second with 1,123. Netscape, Excite and iWon rounded out the top 5 websites by ad revenue

These numbers represent rate-card spending for all banner and button types excluding house advertising. They do not include revenues derived from sponsorships and other fees.