The fizz is going out of the online advertising business. At least that's what some research numbers seem to be suggesting. US-based AdZone Interactive says that ad spending on the Internet plunged 7.6 per cent in August over July. Internet sites and service providers generated $1.4 billion in advertising, says AdZone, much lower than July. So should dotcom folks head for storm shelters? Is the dotcom advertising market on the verge of a collapse? One does not know; one will have to wait and watch. Should ad revenues continue to fall over the next few months in a sustained manner, one will have reason to worry. On current form, the slowdown seems to be an aberration, and hopefully for Internet people it is that. Consider that in January this year: online ad spends for the US - which accounts for 95 per cent of global online revenues - were much lower at $818 million. So the graph has been on the upward curve hitherto. AdZone Interactive monitors 1,300 web sites in the US and it placed AOL.com as the biggestgenerator of online ad revenues with $78.2 million being spent on its site during last year.Indo-Pak in Internet race
Is an Internet race emerging - a la the nuclear arms race - between India and Pakistan? Pakistan is definitely trying hard to play catch up with its larger neighbour. The government says it wants to rival India by 2002. A couple of weeks ago the government opened up Internet access in 100 cities across Pakistan, trebling the number of cities which have Net access.
General Musharraf and his men have a lot of work ahead of them: a recent survey among 42 countries placed Pakistan at the bottom of the heap of e-ready nations - in terms of high-tech infrastructure, information security and trained personnel. Pakistan has less than one-fifth the number of Internet surfers compared to India. In numbers it works out 200,000 or so subscribers for a 140 million strong nation. Telephone density is 3 per cent (three out of every 100 people have a phone). This apart it does software exports of just $20 million annually, and the government wants to grow that by 200 per cent in the next two years. Its figures pale in comparision with India's exports of $3 billion annually.
Internet bug raging across Europe
How are the leading countries in Europe reacting to the WWW? It seems to be pretty hot, going by research conducted by Infratest Burke one behalf of ad sales house AdLINK. It is putting traditional media such as print and television in the shade in terms of usage. AdLINK, discovered that some 51 per cent of British Internet users had reduced the time they spent becoming couch potatoes since they went online. Fifty-two per cent of Germans did the same while the figure for French folks was 59 per cent of them turning cold towards TV.
An average 29 per cent across all the countries used the print media less after surfing the Internet waves. Here's more: the Brits seem to be more loyal to a few sites. 70 per cent of them had bookmarked just 20 Websites. Sixty-one per cent of users use the Internet to search for information on products or companies, while an equal number primarily read the news, sport or weather. Sixty per cent seek travel information and 55 per cent search for regional information. The other two leading searches are for financial information or job offers. What attracts Europeans to certain Websites? Personal recommendation tops the list of reasons that they log on to a particular site, followed by advertisements in the print media, TV commercials, banner ads, and lastly, radio.
From where are the Brits logging on? Eighty-eight per cent of the Brit Internetters said that they logged on from homes, while 11 per cent surfed from the office and one per cent from college. While in India we are just rapping about WAP, it seems to have caught on like a bush wildfire in Europe. Of the 1,300 Internetters surveyed across the four countries, 84 per cent of Germans and 73 per cent Swedes are aware of what it is. The Brits somehow seem to be WAP-ophobic because only 46 per cent of them were aware of what it is. However, 26 per cent of those surveyed in Britain, said they would be interested in buying a WAP phone, the highest among the four nations.
The writer is founder http://www.indiantelevision.com, India's cable, satellite and terrestrial television portal. Email: television@vsnl.com, television@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.