Study Reveals Fundamental Changes in Consumer Use of Web

Finds Portals are Now the Most Popular Destinations

[rcjordan]

"Despite this dramatic change, the study found, many portals still cling to an outdated revenue model that relies on advertising payments based in part on click-through rates. Banner ads accounted for half of all Internet advertising in the second quarter of 2000, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, although click-through rates for banner ads fell more than 40% between October 1999 and October 2000. For example, today only approximately 0.1% of portal visitors click on banner ads, yet Yahoo currently receives 90% of its revenue from ads. Only AOL, which gets 64% of its revenues by selling access to the Internet, does not rely heavily on income from click-through ads." -article here [biz.yahoo.com]

In another write up of the same study, Booz-Allen recommended a need to abandon banner ads and switch to sponsorships [biz.yahoo.com].

[BoneHeadicus]

You can set up your very own portal now with PHP nuke [phpnuke.org] or any one of the 20000 spinoffs.

Hey I got a portal! Anybody wanna sponsor me?

[Drastic]

Wow, 90% of Yahoo!'s revenue is from ads? I thought a good percentage would be from biz-ex listing fees. Maybe they consider those listings to be ads? Surely not, I guess the ad views they generate dwarf the biz-ex listing fees. Interesting.

The second report alarmed me. I don't think banners need to be abandoned. I think the ad-content delivery method should be revised, as discussed here [webmasterworld.com]. In addition, I think banner-type ads should be part of a site's advertising arsenal, rather than the sole method.