• by May 1, 2002

"Perceived cost-cutting alliances and exclusive arrangements with media companies have driven many advertisers to reduce the number of sites they advertise on," said Mainak Mazumdar, head of research and product management at JMM. "The reality on the Internet is that target audiences are often fragmented across multiple sites, thereby limiting the ability of one or just a few sites to efficiently reach a greater number of defined audience members. Conversely, advertisers looking to increase frequency in a campaign may very well lean toward advertising on fewer sites."

In a quantitative study of three popular categories of ad-supported websites -- news, finance and music -- JMM found that placing a four-week ad campaign of four million impressions on any one of the leading four sites would reach an audience of 1.4 to 1.9 million unique visitors.

However, spreading those four million impressions across three of the top four sites within each category substantially broadens the audience reach from 2.2 to 2.5 million unique visitors. JMM found.

Moreover, the audience reach can be increased by up to an additional seven percent by spreading the same four million ad impressions to four sites.

Mazumdar said the findings confirm that “the more you target your audience or ad buy, the greater the likelihood is that you'll need to move away from simple audience-reach metrics and toward more sophisticated reach-and-frequency metrics commonly applied in traditional media."

The sites used for the study were CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo News, NYTimes, Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, CBS Marketwatch, Quicken, MTV, Yahoo Music MP3.com and MSN Music.

# of Sites Advertised On          News  Finance  Music 
1 site only                       1.88
1.42    1.39 
2 of 4 sites                      2.22   1.83    1.87 
3 of 4 sites                      2.46   2.08    2.16 
4 of 4 sites                      2.55   2.22    2.32

Difference between 1 and 4 Sites   36%    56%     67%