News Round-Up, Year End 2002

With Christmas just around the corner and the New Year coming up soon, we thought we’d take this time to recap some of the newsworthy events and trends of 2002 and to release a few new year-end tidbits. So, without further adieu, let’s take a look back at this past year online.

The biggest debate in online advertising throughout the past year was undoubtedly over the use of pop-ups. Although proven effective, they were also proven to be too intrusive, stirring strong emotions in consumers and spawning numerous ad blocking software. In October, in an effort to gain more subscribers as well as keep current subscribers happy, AOL announced that it would no longer display third-party pop-up ads (following similar moves by Earthlink and iVillage).

On December 11, 2002, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its guidelines for the new “Universal Ad Package,” the result of a four-month “process to reduce the number of ad sizes for the purposes of reducing the costs and inefficiencies associated with the planning, buying and creative development of online media.” Some of the biggest names in online publishing (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Cnet, New York Times Digital, The Wall Street Journal Online, and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive) have already agreed to accept the Universal Ad Package which consists of the following standard banner sizes: 300×250, 180×150, 160×600, 728×90.

Do you notice the common man’s banner, the 468×60 is missing? We find this odd too. To give the IAB your own feedback on these voluntary new standards and for more information about the Universal Ad Package, please see the link we provide in our Related Links section at the bottom of this article.

Another heated debate centered around spam and spam solutions. Increasing in droves over 2002 and an ever-growing problem, Jupiter Research predicts that spam will increase from the current average of 698 unsolicited commercial emails per user a year to 1,400 a year by 2006. Various spam blocking software and solutions have been and continue to be created to help combat spam, and the debate continues over what will solve the time- consuming, money-wasting problem.

To help try to inject some confidence into the email advertising industry, on December 17, 2002, the IAB’s newly formed Email Committee announced an Ethical eMail Guarantee, a basic set of guidelines for obtaining and using email lists by IAB member companies. “The guidelines will assure advertisers and agencies that proper list sourcing efforts have been adhered to and that disclosure is articulated on insertion orders by IAB member companies.” More about the assurances provided by the Ethical Email Guaranteed at the link provided in our Related Links section.

On the search engine front, Google continues to grow into a 800 pound guerrilla. Not only are they the predominant search engine used by Netizens, but through agreements with other search engines, they also continue to expand their reach. In early 2002, Google only supplied secondary results to Netscape and Yahoo; now Google feeds its primary search results to several search engines including AOL, Netscape and Yahoo. As an additional bonus to Google advertisers, Google AdWord Select paid placements also appear on AOL, Teoma, AskJeeves and Netscape.

Google success lies in keeping with its fundamental principals: a simple interface, more relevant results, and no pop-up advertising. In the words of one of its founders, Sergey Brin, “Don’t be evil.” Ever innovative, however, in 2002 Google started Google News, where one can search and browse 4,000 continuously updated news sources, and it just launched its newest service, Froogle, a search tool that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. For all you readers with ecommerce stores, get your site listed in Froogle while the competition is scarce!

We also saw the search engine Excite become a meta search engine and Northern Light transform into a news search engine. Overture’s pioneering bid-for-placement CPC model, now syndicated to many of the major search engines, continues one of the major Internet success stories.

2002 also marked a shift away from the “free-for-all” Internet. With a slump in ad revenue, sites began looking for alternative sources of income. eMarketer’s December 2002 “The Online Content Report” examines emerging trends in online paid content and services. The report’s author concludes that, “This does not signal the end of all free content online, or the end of the banner and pop-ups that supports content sites. It is a sign of the emergence of more realistic and robust business models that combine advertising, subscriptions and pay-per-view fees.”

For those of you considering implementing a subscription model, according to a comScore study, consumers are more likely to purchase online content by subscription (85%) rather than buy a single purchase. And of those subscriptions, 57% were annual and 36% were monthly.

To pay for online subscriptions and other purchases, online payment services like PayPal gained more ground than ever. In 2002, eBay purchased PayPal. And with holiday 2002 online shopping breaking records of all kinds and a cautiously optimistic forecast for online media spending in 2003, those of us who have weathered the storm have reason to celebrate. Cheers to that!

Related WebAdvantage.net articles:

• Spam Killers Impact Legitimate Marketers - Part 1
• Spam Killers Impact Legitimate Marketers - Part Two
• Driving Search Engine Results - Does it Pay to Pay?
• Pop-up Ads - Love Them, Hate Them, Use Them??
• Revisiting the Banner

Related Links:

• IAB’s Universal Ad Package
• IAB’s Ethical Email Guarantee
• Wired Magazine’s “Google vs. Evil”
• Froogle

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