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the big get bigger
AOL gains in ad revenues for '01, year of decline
By Marty Beard
With online ad spending down nearly 15 percent last year, what dollars remain out there are being funneled into an ever-shrinking cluster of high-traffic web properties.
AOL reigns as the biggest revenue-earner among web properties last year, according to CMRi, pulling in $439.5 million, followed by Yahoo, which generated $352.6 million.
"A lot of it’s a natural reaction to what has been happening over the past two years, which is ongoing consolidation and brand-building," says Sean Carton, managing partner at Carton Donofrio and Partners, a Baltimore-based interactive firm.
Their greater revenues of AOL and Yahoo are testament to their enduring power as the premier internet brands.
And AOL’s mass-market standing and captive user base don’t hurt either.
"The whole AOL advertising strategy has been directed toward it’s being easy to use, for regular people – that’s always incredibly smart," Carton says.
"So it doesn’t surprise me that they have the sort of numbers they have."
The leading advertisers on AOL last year were mainstream retail and community sites, which clearly were hoping to capitalize upon AOL’s 34 million-person subscriber base.
E-tailer Amazon.com spent the most, with $16.3 million pumped into AOL ads.
Auction site eBay spent $13.4 million; 1-800-Flowers.com spent $11.1 million; women’s portal Oxygen.com spent $7.4 million; and Homestore.com expended $6.3 million on AOL ads.
Unlike AOL, whose users must pay an access service charge of over $20 per month, Yahoo’s services are free to all visitors without costs, and the upshot is that Yahoo attracts a different bunch of advertisers, most of them aimed at lower-income web surfers.
The top two advertisers on Yahoo were both consumer debt counselors. Debticated Counseling spent $10.1 million on Yahoo ads, and Neway Credit Counseling spent $9.9 million.
GiftCertificates.com was the No. 3 advertiser on Yahoo, spending $8.8 million. It was followed by ads for the web site of mass-market insurance company State Farm. Statefarm.com spent about $8 million on Yahoo ads.
Finally, ApartmentGuide.com ran $7.8 million worth of Yahoo ads.
Yahoo manages to keep pulling in the traffic, and thus the ad dollars, despite lacking AOL’s captive user base. For example, 35 million unique visitors passed through Yahoo’s network during the week ended March 10, compared to 39 million at AOL.
"I always find myself going back to Yahoo," Carton says. "That’s been the power of the brand right there."
Surprisingly, the famously troubled Excite Network came in at No. 3 in terms of revenue, netting some $216.6 million – no small sum, but hardly enough to keep the company afloat.
The Excite network, prior to its merger with now-defunct cable net access provider @Home, was a high-flying internet property. But @Home went bust, and Excite was acquired late last year by sweepstakes portal iWon.
Excite’s traffic has since been slipping steadily away as the result of the disappearance of @Home cable internet access service.
The top advertisers last year on Excite were the ubiquitous class-reunion site Classmates.com, which spent $8.7 million on ads there, followed by Webshots Photography Services, Orbitz, Homestore, and Nextcard Visa, which is now out of business.
No. 4 was the Microsoft Network, which raked in $182.5 million in all. The top advertisers there were Classmates.com, Casino on Net, Ameritrade Brokerage, eDiets.com and RadioShack.com.
Lycos came in at No. 5, followed, in order, by CNET, AltaVista, ZDNet, ESPN Internet Group and CNN Interactive.
The situation should be much the same a year from now, Carton speculates.
"Next year this list will be pretty much the same, except perhaps some of these companies will own others, so some of the names might disappear.
"I don’t think that anybody at this point is going to be a wildcard and move up in the pack into the top 10 unless something major changes."
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Top Online
Revenue |
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| Property |
Revenue |
| 1. AOL.com |
439,520,902 |
| 2. Yahoo.com |
352,616,199 |
| 3. Excite Network |
216,561,777 |
| 4. Microsoft Network |
182,525,932 |
| 5. Lycos Network |
168,998,692 |
| 6. CNET |
105,307,287 |
| 7. AltaVista |
77,584,031 |
| 8. ZDNet |
65,339,102 |
| 9. ESPN Internet Group |
57,704,417 |
| 10. CNN Interactive |
51,445,599 |
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Source: CMRi’s AdNetTrackUS |
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Top Brand
Expenditure |
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| AOL.com |
2001 Total |
| 1. Amazon.com |
16,311,827 |
| 2. eBay.com Auctions |
13,426,775 |
| 3. 1-800-Flowers.com |
11,106,677 |
| 4. Oxygen.com |
7,472,847 |
| 5. Homestore.com |
6,341,081 |
| Yahoo.com | |
| 1. Debticated Consumer Counseling |
10,133,019 |
| 2. Neway Credit Counseling |
9,983,739 |
| 3. GiftCertificates.com |
8,811,310 |
| 4. Statefarm.com |
8,008,284 |
| 5. ApartmentGuide.com |
7,874,099 |
| Excite Network | |
| 1. Classmates.com |
6,350,303 |
| 2. Webshots Photography Services |
6,882,705 |
| 3. Orbitz Travel Service |
5,781,075 |
| 4. Homestore.com |
5,337,731 |
| 5. Nextcard Visa |
4,837,207 |
| Microsoft Network | |
| 1. Classmates.com |
6,350,303 |
| 2. Casino on Net |
6,005,174 |
| 3. Ameritrade Brokerage |
4,193,089 |
| 4. eDiets.com |
3,404,089 |
| 5. Radioshack.com Store |
3,116,502 |
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Source: CMRi’s AdNetTrackUS |
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March 18, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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