While companies spent $12.4M in the fourth quarter of '95 to
advertise on the World Wide Web, digital publishers and ad
agencies remain at "loggerheads" over how the ads should be
priced, according to INTERACTIVE WEEK. Currently, most rates are
"based on or justified by" CPM -- which measures how much it
costs to get an ad in front of 1,000 people through a newspaper,
billboard, TV show, radio spot or Web site. But on the Web, just
what CPM is counting can vary from impressions, click-throughs,
keyword searches, sponsorships, and joint development. Tim Clark
reports media directors who buy ads want more targeted measures,
while sites which produce specialty content think CPM's
undervalue their audiences. Rich Le Furgy, top administrator at
Starwave Corp., which publishes ESPNET's SportsZone says media
buys that focusing on CPM's or click-throughs and not on
audiences delivered "are missing the point. Sites that charge by
CPM or by transfer rates are taking the easy way out. And
they're hurting the developing online advertising community by
undervaluing the audiences they do deliver." Clark notes the
"most promising" new technology for inferring information on the
paths Web users take is called "cookies." Built into Netscape's
Navigator 2.0 Web browser, "cookies" allows a site to "tag" a
visitor with a code which stays with them even after the browser
returns later (Tim Clark, INTERACTIVE WEEK, 4/8 issue).
TOP AD WEB SITES TOP AD WEB SPENDERS
January '96 Revenues January '96 Spending
Lycos $833.4K IBM $460.9K
Yahoo! $715.0K Microsoft $248.2K
Netscape $649.5K AT&T $245.7K
ESPNet SptsZn $466.7K Netscape $227.4K
InfoSeek $460.1K Nynex $198.5K
Pathfinder $380.0K MCI $187.3K
HotWired $368.3K C/Net $177.8K
Excite $320.5K I'net Shopping $172.9K
ZDNet $301.0K Excite $165.9K
C/Net $294.8K Saturn $158.4K
