• Ad Age, Monday, December 10, 2007 11:45 AM

Staid old supermarket staples--once scoffed at as laggards in digital media--have grown twice as fast as the U.S. Internet population in the past year. Unique visitors to package-goods brand Web sites soared 10% compared with a year ago in the third quarter to 66.4 million, according to ComScore. That's double the 5% rise in users.

The traffic increase appears to come primarily from a surge in online display advertising from package-goods players, which, while relatively late to embrace the medium, are now coming on strong. Mars' Uncle Ben's site, for example, which cracked the industry's top 10 last quarter, did so primarily by using targeted banner ads on Oprah.com and FoodNetwork.com.

Food marketers occupied all 10 of the top spots in ComScore's scorecard. But that doesn't count what most likely would have been the industry's most heavily visited site--Johnson & Johnson's Baby Center--which ComScore excluded because it's essentially a media and e-tailing site. Others in the top 10 include the rapidly growing My Coke Rewards; Hersheys.com; Mars' MMs.com; and Candystand, a site that has supported Lifesavers through three corporate owners.

Read the whole story at Ad Age »