LOCAL AD SPENDING ONLINE BALLOONED 28 percent to $2.7 billion last year, according to a report released Monday by research company Borrell Associates. The report, "What Local Web Sites Earn: 2005 Survey," based on a survey of Web sites of 2,177 local media properties, predicts even higher expansion--46 percent, to $3.9 billion--this year. Local marketers of computer-related services spent the largest proportion of their ad budgets--7.3 percent--online, followed by bars and restaurants--3.3 percent--and business-to-business advertisers--3.2 percent. Borrell defined local advertising as "advertising placed by locally based businesses for locally focused online messages."
While some marketers have long feared that the Internet would cut into the time consumers spend with other media--such as television and print media--it appears that the opposite is true. Adults who go online most frequently also watch more shows and read more newspapers than their less wired counterparts, according to a Carat Insight analysis of data from Mediamark Research, Inc. and Multimedia Scan. The report, based on personal interviews and surveys of 23,000 U.S. adults conducted over a period of several months during the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004, found that adults who go online at least daily watch 46 more minutes of television a day than those who go online less frequently. The daily Web habitues also reported reading at least 16 magazine issues and 27 newspapers in the prior month
Since the beginning of the Web, publishers have made the case that the Internet is the most measurable medium ever – one that allows accurate measurement of site usage and advertising effectiveness. But while site administrators are awash in data, many have found that the numbers generate as much confusion as understanding.
Overall economic growth was more consistent in 2004 than 2003, rising at what many economists considered an "above-trend" level. When the final figures are in for the full year, 2004 will probably have an increase in Gross Domestic Product of about 4.4 percent. That is about a full percentage point above what many consider to be the underlying growth potential for the economy
Affluent young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are more familiar with--and dependent on--the Internet than other online consumers, which leads them to engage in a broader range of online activities, according to a report from JupiterResearch.
The report, "Young Affluents Online," finds that young adults who earn more than $75,000 a year use the Web, on average, 43 percent more than the average online consumer for Web browsing, entertainment and media consumption, shopping and e-commerce, and other online activities. Their less prosperous counterparts between the ages of 25 and 34 use the Web the same amount as average online consumers in all age groups, according to the report.
Popular community web site Craigslist, which launched in the mid-1990s, has cost newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area from $50 million to $65 million in employment advertising revenue, a consulting group said Monday.
For the third quarter in a row, the three top online job boards showed far greater year-over-year revenue growth from classified listings than did print newspapers, according to Corzen, Inc., a niche market research firm.
Studies released yesterday by America Online and BURST! Media signal strong e-commerce sales this holiday season. AOL found that consumers who research and/or shop online intend to do 53 percent of their holiday shopping online, while BURST! reported that 57.6 percent of consumers surveyed online with a household income of $75,000 or more plan to do more than half of their shopping online.
