ad brothelGood news for everyone but market-battered dot coms: Competitive Media stated that dot com companies spent $2.5 billion on advertising in the first eleven months of 1999 and a whopping $671 million in November alone (can you say up 518% from 1998? can you say, burning through funding at an alarming rate?). I'd venture to guess that first and second quarter offline spending might level off, if not drop, as the recent stock market swings have resulted in downward stock spirals for all of the weaker (read: not profitable) websters. In a related item, USA Today reported that post-Superbowl, super-bad, dot com ad frenzy, a number of dot coms are returning to their roots: that phenom known as viral marketing (in other industries, they call it word of mouth). Apparently, a mere 17% of viewers could recall a dot com ad post-Bowl. And I know that doesn't surprise you. A herd is as a herd does. Hey, I just heard in an email that email is the fastest growing part of the Web, 83% more addresses being formed than last year! That about matches the fact that I have three email addresses now, one of which I've all but abandoned due to spam, despite Hotmail's ad filter (which doesn't filter out MS ads, incidentally). Anyway, this stat illustrates one thing: the people have come. Now if they only had more decent places to shop. [Publisher's Note: These stats ought to make viral marketers' mouths water.] Adding to the data glut, NeilsenNetRatings reported that men continue to use the Internet more than women, comprising 54% of those who logged on at work in the U.S. during February, surfing for an average of 22 hours compared to women, who clocked in at around 18 hours. The findings state that although half of users at home are women, men stay online longer. Now, you could get excited about these stats and start crafting campaigns around them, except for one thing - they don't really say anything at all. What's Neilsen's methodology? How many respondents were surveyed? How many households? What are the psychographics of the respondents? How were they determined? These numbers could mean just about anything anyone wanted them to mean, which I guess is probably someone's point. But the numbers are nothing without the why's - it's the why's that result in purchases. Why are more men online at work? Does this reflect the kind of work that men in offices do compared to women? Or the number of men in offices compared to women? Why are men online longer at home? Are women using the Internet to get information and then go have a life, while men are grazing online instead of the TV? Are they at porn sites? Tracking stock portfolios? Are women not online as much, by desire or by home life demand? Don't give us meaningless numbers; give us rigorous ones - backed by rigorous analysis. Our favorite fallen angels DoubleClick, were the lucky winners of the corporate invader award at this year's Big Brother awards ceremony, held in conjunction with the annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference (a conference at which U.S. representation was noticeably scant - figures. Everyone was probably too busy hanging at the with Two Bills in Washington, as if anyone actually cares.) |
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