• by Masha Geller , July 2, 2001

The most recent report out of Diameter, a division of DoubleClick Inc. and comScore Networks, indicates that the Internet's most widely recognized sites are not necessarily the most valuable in terms of attracting online spenders.

The netScore Buying Power Index (BPI) report for May ranked selected sites from key categories - Portals, Travel, News & Information - and uncovered the following results:

- News & Information - Represented among the top BPI sites in this category were wsj.com (353), washingtonpost.com (272) and cbsnews.com (268). However, the "Detroit News" website, detnews.com (367) took the top position in the category with the heaviest spending audience.

- Portals - According to the report, while media planners typically look first at mega-portals such as yahoo.com (125) and aol.com (140) for media buys, many other portals have very attractive audiences.

May rankings showed altavista.com (160) with the highest BPI among large portals, followed by excite.com (142) and juno.com (142) as the portal sites with the greatest potential to attract online buyers.

- Travel - Attracting visitors who are very heavy Internet spenders, travel sites lead all categories. During May, travel sites actually outpaced shopping sites. Twelve of the top 20 sites in the overall May BPI rankings were travel sites.

Hertz.com (874) was the highest ranked site in the report. Additional travel sites that ranked very high included: basshotels.com (686), hilton.com (649), and budget.com (635).

The BPI measures the total dollars spent online by the average member of a site's audience, indexed to the total online dollars spent by the average Internet user. For example, a BPI of 100 represents the baseline index, so a BPI of 200 would mean the average visitor to that site spends twice as much online as the average Internet user.

Moral of the story? Constructing an online media plan around high-traffic sites and targeted demographics may not be the best solution.