Online Outpaces Traditional Advertising in Some Categories DoubleClick Inc. and Nielsen//NetRatings, in a joint Year in Online Advertising Report for 2003, developed a picture of
the relative growth of ad spending both in aggregate and by key industry segments. Doug Knopper, Senior Vice President at DoubleClick, said "The online medium outpaced certain categories of
traditional media in terms of spending growth; volume is up across categories, and Fortune 500 companies renewed their commitment to interactive marketing"
And Charles Buchwalter, Vice President
Nielsen//NetRatings, said "Last year marked the first time that large traditional advertisers began to spend more online."
Nielsen//NetRatings reported Online advertising (not including
search) rose to 280 billion impressions in Q4. DoubleClick data, representing top publishers, marketers and advertising agencies that use third party ad serving, showed volume was up 49%.
Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that ad spending grew 20% year-over-year to $7.2 billion. Automotive had 74.9% on an impression basis year-over-year Telecommunications had
31.2% growth, year-over-year, on an impression basis. Retail had an 8.7% of total spend devoted to the medium, but with a dramatic decrease in impressions. 48.5% of business
proposition and employment recruiting ad spend is Online 15.4% of all travel ad spending is now online. Business and consumer services (including credit cards and financial services)
devoted more advertising to online than to newspaper, magazines or radio. Fortune 500 companies averaged 28.5% of all online advertising. Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance estimates 223%
rich media growth Q1 - Q4 to 17.4% of all ads. Within the DoubleClick's system, rich media grew to nearly 40% of all ads served by Q4. In Q4, the average amount of time a Motif ad
displayed in a user's browser was 41.9 seconds and the average amount of time a user interacted with the ad was 21.9 seconds. These figures compare with broadcast media where a typical unit can engage
a consumer for 30 seconds. Use of Pop-ups and pop-unders, perhaps the most controversial form of online advertising, did not grow dramatically in 2003, and account for under two percent of all
ads served.
