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Friday
- September 15, 2000
Family Advertising Increases While Kid Advertising
Decreases
Even though online advertising by businesses
targeting families and children grew steadily through the
first quarter
of this year, advertisers wanting to reach kids online
are shifting their focus away from children and on to families,
according to a new report released today by AdRelevance,
a division of Media Metrix and an innovator in Internet
advertising measurement technology. Online advertising
by businesses targeting families grew 96 percent between
May
2000 and August 2000, while advertising by companies targeting
children declined 56 percent in the same period.
Key findings from the latest AdRelevance Intelligence
Report, which analyzes standard 468x60 banner ad campaigns
of 183 child and family-focused online advertisers between
January 2000 and August 2000, include:
- A majority of ad impressions for child
and family-focused online advertisers run on relatively
few kinds of sites - portals, kids and family sites.
- With only 4.6 percent fewer online ad
impressions, child and family sites are almost as popular
as portals for child-focused advertisers. Among family-focused
advertisers, however, the child and family genre is a
distant second to portals, hosting 22.5 percent fewer
banner impressions. These findings suggest that child-focused
advertisers concentrate their impressions on fewer sites
than do advertisers targeting the family audience.
- While the most popular portals for child-focused
advertisers are MSN (13.62 percent share of impressions),
Netscape (12.97 percent) and Yahoo! (8.43 percent), family-focused
advertisers prefer Yahoo! (27.07 percent share of impressions),
AOL.com (12.28 percent), Go.com (6.92 percent) and Altavista
(5.35 percent).
- Television, entertainment and movie advertisers
account for 30 percent of all impressions on kids and
family Web sites, while department stores, pet supply
vendors and toy retailers account for a combined 19 percent
of impressions, suggesting that building retail opportunities
among the child and family audiences is important to
advertisers.
"The shift that we're seeing in child
and family advertising online might be tied in part to the
recent FTC privacy guidelines. It's safe to say that companies
have learned to tread lightly as they seek to target younger
generations," said Charlie Buchwalter, vice president
of media research for the AdRelevance division of Media Metrix. "Clearly,
the latest AdRelevance data suggest a reallocation of online
ad dollars from the child to the parent."
Although the overall industry trend is to target
parents, not all advertisers are switching all impressions
to fully target the parental audience. In fact, Fleet Bank
recently ran a unique campaign to reach both parents and
children, hoping to drive traffic to Fleetkids.com. While
the ad banners focus on building the Fleet brand as a source
of knowledge for children to learn how to become financially
responsible, the campaign also helps parents educate their
children on the responsibilities that go with money.
"The latest AdRelevance analysis suggests
that advertisers wanting to reach the child and family audiences
are going to great lengths to protect children by ensuring
that advertising content is easily differentiated from site
content," Buchwalter said. "We're seeing more and
more ads on these sites flagged with text or graphics to
make it clear to both parents and kids that banners are paid
advertisements."
Virtual Shops Need Real Clerks
According to the Detroit Free Press:
"As a cybershopper, Charlene Brown finds
it nearly impossible to reach real people to answer questions
about ordering from different Websites.
So as an online art retailer in Troy, Brown
makes sure a phone number is easily visible to customers
who browse her Web sites. Brown, who owns and operates three
online art businesses, also tries to answer the calls herself
so she can understand customers' problems and questions..."
Click
here for the full story.
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2000 News Archive
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