• by March 2, 2001

The shows are over, the booths are gone, the attendees and exhibitors have gone home. But one fact remains – Internet advertising cannot and will not survive in a vacuum. The fact that it's only a small slice of the advertising pie is what both the Jupiter conference in New York and especially the AAAA Media convention in New Orleans stressed this week.

Is the slice getting bigger? Yes - impressions are still growing, advertising budgets are up, the number of Internet users is up and the amount of time spent online is up. According to Jupiter, the number of users increased to 79 million from 59 million over the past year while users spend 676 minutes a month online compared with 428 minutes last year.

But the hyper growth is over - while growth was at 100% per quarter in 1999, it's at just 21% now.

As much as it may pain us Internet enthusiasts to hear it, one of our readers, Media Vision's Deborah Cover-Lewis, said it best: "no one medium can do it all." In response to yesterday's Minute, she wrote, "Does the Internet have 100% coverage of the U.S.? No? Well then you need a media mix to achieve that higher reach."

"In addition, people use media differently," she said. "For example, you can't access the Internet or read the newspaper while commuting an hour and a half to work each way. But you can listen to the radio. And if you're looking at wireless messages on your cell phone while driving, you're an accident waiting to happen, so we won't count you." And obviously, there are more examples. Should we lose the enthusiasm and stop trying to make the web a better place for our clients' ads? Of course not. But here's to coming back to earth and putting the web in its rightful place - as just one of the many advertising vehicles out there.