Internet Advertising:
Who’s Spending What

Internet advertising spending by industry continued to grow steadily through the first three quarters of 1998, with the computer industry leading the spenders and Yahoo! Inc.'s Web property the leading publisher, according to an InterMedia Advertising Solutions report.

The top 25 industries of 400 surveyed by InterMedia increased online advertising spending by 86.7 percent over the first three-quarters, compared to the same period in 1997.

The computer, Internet services and software sector was the highest spender. Companies from this group accounted for 47.3 percent of all Internet advertising.

Microsoft was the top individual spender on the Internet during the period, shelling out a cool $25.5 million, up 7.8 percent over 1997. IBM is now closing the gap at $21 million, a 77 percent increase. Excite was third at $8.8 million, followed closely by General Motors, up 111.8 percent to $8.2 million.

Fast growing industries were medicines, government and organizations, direct response companies, retail and financial services.

Among the approximate 300 web sites InterMedia tracked, the top 50 sites accounted for over $636.5 million in revenue through the first nine months of 1998. Yahoo! took the top spot, followed by Excite/Webcrawler, Infoseek, Lycos and the Microsoft Network.

The report found that the Internet is now registering on the advertising budgets of companies. Online now represents 1.5% of overall ad budgets, compared to 0.74 percent for the full year of 1997.

In the computer and software industry this figure rockets to 17.3 percent of budget, with business and technology allocating 7.8 percent, direct response companies setting aside 2.8 percent and the financial industry tagging 2.2 percent of spending.