By Jeremy Schlosberg
 
     The bottom dropped out of the electronic greeting card market after the new year turned, as seen by the new web numbers from Nielsen//NetRatings for the week of Jan. 3 through Jan. 9.
    The previous week Excite@Home hit an all-time high No. 4 position on the list of top web properties, bolstered by its purchase of Blue Mountain Arts, the web’s leading card site. This week it was back to No. 5 behind the Lycos Network. Excite@Home’s reach dropped by almost 24 percent in one week.
    Another notable change in the top 15 properties for the week were a downward drop from Time Warner, hitting No. 12 after being No. 9 the week before. This had nothing to do with the merger announcement, since these numbers cover a time period that came before the big deal.
    And a week after it looked like CNET had become a fixture in the top 15, out it went, replaced by arch rival ZDNet, of all properties.
    Over in the list of top banners for the week ending Jan. 9, two new advertisers appeared, both in the financial services arena: AmeriDebt, which centralizes debt payments for people, and GetSmart, which also offers debt consolidation among other services. The GetSmart ad follows the Bonzi Software model of imitating a Windows message box—a trend at once logical and irritating.

-Jeremy Schlosberg is the senior editor for new media..