• by November 20, 2000

When a few months ago pundits floated the idea of traditional advertisers stepping in to fill the online revenue gap left by failing dot-coms, many remained skeptical. For once, the pundits were right.

AdRelevance today announced that the number of new companies advertising online has more than doubled since January - growing by 157% over the past ten months.

According to the report, the number of new companies advertising online is growing at an average rate of 14% a month. Twenty-four percent (949 companies) of all advertisers in the month of January 2000 (3,963 companies) were new to the web. While traditional advertisers accounted for approximately 41% of the top 100 new online advertisers in January 2000, they make up close to 50% in October 2000 - with dot com companies rounding out the other half.

Also, more than 1,000 companies have advertised online for the first time, each month since March 2000. Third quarter of this year saw 5,489 new advertisers coming online - far surpassing first quarter (2,935 new advertisers) and second quarter (3,879 new advertisers).

Planet Project was the number one new online advertiser for October 2000, running a campaign with 110,000,000 impressions. Charlie Buchwalter, VP of media research for AdRelevance, said the data clearly illustrate that new advertisers are coming online on a regular basis. "Despite a financially slower third quarter, it's interesting to note that far more advertisers came online for the first time in August than in any month prior to it this year," he said. "Even more compelling is the fact that new traditional advertisers are growing at a faster rate than new dot-com advertisers.