AdKnowledge, a provider of Web
advertising management solutions, said that its 1998 online advertising
statistics from more than 1,400 sites shows that the rise in e-commerce is
fueling Web ad growth.
The Palo Alto, CA-based company’s second annual Online Advertising Report
(OAR) Year In Review said that two of the fastest-growing categories of sites
were classifieds and shopping/transactions. These two e-commerce-driven
categories accounted for more than one third of the new sites established in
1998.
The study found growth in every site category with the number of sites seeking
advertising increasing during 1998 from 1,033 in December 1997 to 1,424 in
December 1998.
However, the report shows online advertising rates continued a downward trend.
For the second year in a row, average CPMs were down 6 percent. The average CPM in
December 1997 was $37.21, a number that declined to $35.13 by the end of 1998.
However, two of the larger categories, computers/technology and
shopping/transactions, actually increased their CPM rates in 1998.
“As one might have expected with all the pre-Christmas predictions of big e-
commerce sales volume, advertisers flocked to the Web to attract shoppers,”
said Kevin Wandryk, vice president of marketing at AdKnowledge. “Although
Web advertising rates fell 6 percent for the second year, CPM rates also declined during
the fourth quarter, historically
the busiest advertising time of the year. We expect this downward trend to
continue due to the ongoing rapid growth in the supply of online ad space.”
The report also showed that WebTV’s market share has tripled from .6 percent in
December 1997 to 2.9 percent in December 1998. Additionally, when WebTV’s market
share of 2.9 percent is combined with Microsoft Internet Explorer’s share of 47.8 percent,
Microsoft now owns more
than 50 percent of the browser market share, the report said.
AdKnowledge uses a data warehouse to supply information from its OAR report to
interactive agencies and marketers to help them optimize their Web advertising
campaigns. The report is a compilation of statistics gathered from the
AdKnowledge System, which includes five components: planning; campaign buying
and trafficking; ad serving and targeting; reporting; and analysis.
The full report is available here. (Requires
Acrobat Reader.)
