AdRelevance Takes Stock of Online Entertainment Sites

In its first survey of advertising for the online entertainment industry,
MediaMetrix‘ (MMXI)
AdRelevance on Tuesday released
report in which casinos were, by far, the dominant advertisers in the
ategory.

According to the report, casinos accounted for 190 million impressions
during the month of February. The next biggest category, television, only
had 66 million impressions during the month. Movies came next, with 30
million impressions. Together, these three accounted for 90 percent of
total impressions in the entertainment ads placed in the last six months,
according to AdRelevance.

Lycos (LCOS)
, AltaVista, and CNNSi were the ones benefiting most from
entertainment ads, according to the report. Lycos garnered 25 million
impressions in February, while AltaVista was close behind with 24 million.
CNNSi brought in 20 million impressions in the category.

Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research at AdRelevance,
believes entertainment players are increasingly promoting their offerings
online.

“By using the Internet, consumers are able to make more informed decisions
about entertainment than they have in the past,” he said.

“For example, instead of viewing an ad in a newspaper and getting only a
small sense of what a movie’s about, movie studios are enabling consumers
to go online, click a banner ad promoting a new movie and access a
streaming media trailer.”

With the addition of the entertainment category, AdRelevance says it’s now
tracking more than 93 percent of all Internet ads.