Big Four Portals Grab Bulk Of Ad Dollars

Despite an increasingly fragmented online universe, big-name portals are alive and thriving.The Big Four i.e. Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN will sop up a whopping two-thirds, 66% of the $19.5 billion spent on online advertising.

Traditional marketers tend to find safety in established, mass-market brands. And since advertisers put only 6.6% of their ad budgets online in 2006, the need for established Internet brands will remain strong for several years.

This year, Google accounts for a full 32.1% of all online ad spending, while Yahoo will come in a distant second with 18.7%. AOL which only last year switched from a subscription model to an ad-supported one will take 9.1% of all online ad revenue, while MSN is expected to trail with 6.8%.

The portals' control over online ad dollars has only increased year over year. In 2005, the four captured more than half i.e. 53.7% of that year's Internet ad spending: $12.5 billion. Why are portals still so popular with advertisers? The short answer is tons of traffic, since each of the four averages 100 million or more unique visitors monthly. That translates into 57.4% of ad revenue in 2006 alone. The massive scale and something-for-everyone kind of experience offered by portals will continue to attract a certain type of advertiser and consumer.

Source: MediaPost