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of BlackPlanet.com
Top ad site for reaching Afro-American surfers
By Marty Beard
Online ad sales may have wilted, especially for the larger general-interest web sites and portals, but there are some notable exceptions.
One is BlackPlanet.com, a community site serving African-Americans. For the week ending Aug. 5, BlackPlanet.com ranked No. 22 on the Nielsen//NetRatings chart of top ad domains, with 20 million ad impressions.
As much as anything, BlackPlanet is benefiting from the rapid growth of blacks coming online as the web becomes an increasingly mainstream medium.
BlackPlanet says it has 3.4 million members and is registering 8,000 new ones a day. The site last appeared on the top-25 list in March.
The company says it recently posted one of its strongest quarters ever, ad slowdown or no ad slowdown.
"We’re still getting a lot of advertisers that are interested in targeting the group, even in the soft ad market," says Andrew Lokko, a spokesman for BlackPlanet’s parent company, Community Connect.
"There’s a new wave of African-Americans going online—young and tech-savvy, with disposable income," Lokko says. "It’s a ripe target, and advertisers cannot overlook this."
These days blacks are coming online nearly twice as fast as they were two years ago, according to a recent study by consultancy CulturalAccess Group.
The study suggests that African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than other demographic groups to log on for career advancement, family and health information, education and communication.
That corroborates an earlier study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that black web surfers are likelier to use the web to help with major life decisions.
"African Americans who gain access to the internet seem interested in seeking web tools for major life issues like jobs, housing and spirituality," Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, told Media Life in October.
The Pew study noted that blacks are 65 percent more likely than whites to seek religious and spiritual information online. Also, blacks are 38 percent more inclined than whites to hunt for jobs online.
Fifty-seven percent of African-Americans told Pew that they look to the web for help with their hobbies, and 55 percent of blacks say they use the internet to stay in touch with friends.
To that end, BlackPlanet features typical online community services, such as news stories and headlines, discussion forums, chat rooms and games.
The site first went live in September 1999. These days, 52 percent of its users are male, 48 percent are female, and 44 percent are between the ages of 18 and 24. The average BlackPlanet member is college-educated and has a mean household income of $46,304.
BlackPlanet parent Community Connect also owns MiGente.com, targeted to Hispanics, and AsianAvenue.com, targeted to Asian-Americans.
BlackPlanet, working through the DoubleClick ad network, is attracting such advertisers as Schwann’s, Coca-Cola, Amazon.com, Showtime, MTV, Intel and GetSmart.com. The site offers most ad formats, including pop-ups, banners and micro-sites, in addition to sponsorships of content within its various channels.
Earlier this summer, BlackPlanet leveraged its sizable mailing list in a promotion for the Columbia Pictures film "Baby Boy." A message from the director, John Singleton of "Boyz N the Hood" fame, went out to a list of 400,000 BlackPlanet members who had indicated in their profiles that they enjoy movies.
BlackPlanet’s competition includes NetNoir, which has been around since 1994, and Africana.com, an AOL Time Warner Property that was founded by prominent Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. The site is also up against BET.com, which acquired 360HipHip.com last October.
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Top 10 Advertisers |
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Advertiser |
Impressions (000) |
Unique Audience (000) |
Active Reach (%) |
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1. Microsoft |
485,666 |
21,357 |
28.60 |
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2. Yahoo |
304,632 |
19,190 |
25.70 |
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3. AOL Time Warner |
279,522 |
24,257 |
32.48 |
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4. Sony |
156,402 |
21,421 |
28.69 |
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5. eBay |
149,219 |
16,006 |
21.43 |
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6. Classmates Online |
144,348 |
16,140 |
21.61 |
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7. J.P. Morgan Chase |
138,644 |
12,259 |
16.42 |
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8. Providian Bank Corp |
134,635 |
18,839 |
25.23 |
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9. Bertelsmann |
118,215 |
9,091 |
12.17 |
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10. Nextcard |
107,794 |
12,174 |
16.30 |
| Source:
Nielsen//NetRatings
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Top 25 Advertising Domains |
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Domain |
Impressions (000) |
Active Reach (%) |
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1. yahoo.com |
1,229,304 |
32.08 |
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2. msn.com |
893,818 |
30.59 |
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3. aol.com |
464,808 |
30.4 |
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4. ebay.com |
105,411 |
5.90 |
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5. netscape.com |
102,991 |
7.10 |
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6. lycos.com |
82,887 |
4.18 |
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7. ezboard.com |
65,873 |
1.08 |
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8. audiogalaxy.com |
62,847 |
1.25 |
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9. monster.com |
58,200 |
1.71 |
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10. pogo.com |
57,851 |
2.43 |
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11. go.com |
54,792 |
4.99 |
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12. excite.com |
52,546 |
3.74 |
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13. musiccity.com |
51,010 |
1.23 |
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14. att.net |
42,545 |
2.17 |
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15. cnn.com |
29,800 |
2.55 |
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16. netzero.net |
29,693 |
1.85 |
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17. mapquest.com |
28,595 |
2.93 |
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18. server.com |
26,732 |
0.20 |
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19. compuserve.com |
25,203 |
2.70 |
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20. fastclick.net |
22,375 |
4.42 |
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21. msnbc.com |
21,561 |
3.60 |
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22. blackplanet.com |
20,407 |
0.55 |
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23. cartoonnetwork.com |
20,241 |
1.14 |
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24. cnet.com |
19,442 |
2.31 |
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25. aimster.com |
18,154 |
0.45 |
| Source:
Nielsen//NetRatings
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Top Ten Banners |
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Advertiser |
Impressions (000) |
Unique Audience (000) |
Active Reach (%) |
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1. ClassMates Online |
77,414 |
8,820 |
11.81 |
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2. Debticated Consumer Counseling |
33,765 |
6,891 |
9.23 |
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3. Columbia House |
15,717 |
6,208 |
8.31 |
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4. Debticated Consumer Counseling |
30,667 |
6,183 |
8.28 |
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5. eDiets |
11,731 |
6,091 |
8.16 |
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6. ClassMates Online |
42,564 |
5,674 |
7.60 |
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7. Gap |
24,356 |
5,571 |
7.46 |
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8. J.P. Morgan Chase |
20,217 |
5,349 |
7.16 |
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9. eBay |
26,654 |
5,269 |
7.06 |
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10. NextCard |
20,006 |
5,008 |
6.71 |
| Source:
Nielsen//NetRatings
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August 16, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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