• Ad Age, Friday, December 8, 2006 10:48 AM

Large corporate marketers are finding that their Web sites generate more traffic than the Web sites they buy ads on to drive traffic to their Web pages. As a result, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, primarily a retailer on the Web, is shifting its Web strategy to a free portal supported by advertising.

According to research firm comScore Media Metrix, the combined monthly traffic to Proctor & Gamble and Unilever's personal hygiene and cosmetics brand sites is a staggering 9 million, almost one-third of YouTube's total monthly uniques, and much higher than many other news and video outlets.

Yet consumer packaged-goods brands don't sell many products online. People visit corporate Web sites with questions or comments about a marketer's brand. A recent Nielsen study for BuzzMetrics using the traffic monitor's Homescan panel found that 33% of creators of user-generated media also provided email feedback to companies or brands via their Web sites, and 13% participate in company blogs. Their engagement with brands is well above normal, but most importantly, these people are most likely to recommend products to their friends.

How do visitors find corporate Web sites? By clicking on display ads. That's right, its hits come from Yahoo and other content providers, not Google, which still mostly sells advertising to direct marketers.

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