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Rush of New Brands to the Web as Some Die Twice as many new names as six months ago By Jeremy Schlosberg What's the connection between the health of dot.com businesses and the health of internet advertising? Maybe not that much after all. Even as dot.coms have scaled back and shut down throughout 2000, the number of new brands being advertised on the web has steadily increased throughout the year. During the first two weeks tracked in September, the weekly average number of new brands advertising on the web was 831, according to Leading Web Advertisers (LWA), an online ad measurement firm. In March of this year, the average number of new brands advertising on the web per week was 443. While there are weekly fluctuations, the rise throughout the year has been slow and steady. "There's all this noise in the marketplace about how advertisers are fleeing the web, but we just don't see that," says Michael Kubin, LWA co-founder and co-CEO. "We see an ever-increasing number of advertisers coming onto the web." In February, the average number of new brands coming to advertise on the web in a given week was 429. In January, the number was somewhat higher - 497 - due to some post-holiday advertising. The new brand data tracks all brands that are new to the web within 24 hours of an ad's first appearance. In May, 1999-the first full month tracked by Leading Web Advertisers-the average weekly number of new brands was 250. The LWA data is yet more evidence to show that the financial phenomenon of the dot.com shakeout must not be confused with the media phenomenon that is the internet. When companies with bad business plans and no revenue stream run out of funding, it impacts advertising spending to the extent that these companies tossed some of their easy money into advertising on a variety of media including TV, radio, magazines and the web. But no matter who goes out of business, the web remains a place where millions of people are going for information and entertainment everyday and therefore, says Kubin, a place advertisers are going to want to be. "On the one hand it seems kind of obvious," he says. "I mean, if you have ads on urinals, why can't you have ads on a computer screen that many people spend many hours in front of?" On the other hand, he says, he knows there still seems to be a lot of discussion focused on whether the web works for advertisers. He hopes the fact that the number of new advertisers coming onto the web has roughly tripled in a year and a half might help ease those who still doubt the internet. "I think it should be comforting to those people who are looking to see if the web is in fact a long-term advertising medium," says Kubin, who was managing director of Western International Media before co-founding Leading Web Advertisers last year. "This says to me that there is a lot of interest in the medium-that the internet is attracting new brands at a sustainable pace." LWA tracks advertising on more than 2,100 of the web's largest ad-supported sites at least once a day. Its database contains information on 40,000 brands and advertisers. Advertising tracked includes clickable ads of all shapes and sizes, formats that together account for about 60 percent of all online spending, according to the company.
NEW BRANDS ON THE INTERNET
*First two weeks only Source: Leading Web Advertisers © 2000 Media Life
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