Telecommunications Companies Become Fastest Growing Online Advertisers

year-over-year of four percentage points from two percent of impressions in 2003. Equipment 9s share of impressions followed with two percent of telecommunications 9 online advertising in December 2004, declining from seven percent in 2003.<br><br> Table 1: Top Five Telecommunications Segments in Online Advertising, December 2003 and 2004, (US, Home & Work) Segment 2003 Share of Impressions 2004 Share of Impressions Wireless Service 53% 52% ISP & Broadband 20% 18% Local & Long Distance 15% 15% Internet Telephony & Messaging 2% 6% Equipment 7% 2% Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance, January 2005 *Impressions are the count of a delivered basic advertising unit from an ad distribution point. Impressions are how most Web advertising is sold. SBC Communications, Inc.<br><br> led the telecommunications industry as the top advertiser with 32 percent of telecommunications impressions in December 2004, growing 22 percentage points year-over-year from ten percent in December 2003 (see Table 2). Verizon Communications, Inc. followed with ten percent of impressions during December 2004, rising three percentage points year-over-year.<br><br> Vonage Holdings Corp. also took ten percent of impressions in December 2004, increasing eight percentage points year- over-year from two percent of impressions in December 2003. BellSouth Corporation garnered six percent of impressions in 2004, increasing five percentage points year-over-year from one percent of impressions in December 2003.<br><br> Rounding out the top five, AT&T Wireless Services, Inc. secured five percent of impressions in December 2004, declining 22 percentage points year-over-year from 27 percent of impressions. cThe current wave of telecommunications consolidations is reminiscent of an old West shoot-out with the last man standing laying claim to a larger subscriber base across multiple service platforms d said Corey Jeffery, senior analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.<br><br> cThe data above demonstrates that the online medium has proven to be uniquely successful, despite these pressures, at reaching the the most desired target market for telecommunications customers." Table 2: Top Telecommunications Advertisers Ranked by Share of Impressions in December 2004 vs. 2003 (US, Home & Work) Company 2003 Share of Impressions 2004 Share of Impressions SBC Communications, Inc. 10% 32% Verizon Communications, Inc.<br><br> 7% 10% Vonage Holdings Corp 2% 10% BellSouth Corporation 1% 6% AT&T Wireless Services, Inc. 27% 5% Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance, January 2005 *Impressions are the count of a delivered basic advertising unit from an ad distribution point. Impressions are how most Web advertising is sold.<br><br> Email Tops Online Advertising Strategies in Telecommunications Segments Email sites, including Juno Email, MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, rank as the most popular advertising genre for the telecommunications industry. The Internet telephony/messaging segment executed 80 percent of its advertising strategy via email, while the wireless services segment focused 62 percent of its advertisements via email (see Table 3).<br><br> The equipment and local/long distance segments centered 41 percent and 19 percent of their advertising strategies on email, respectively. The ISP/broadband segment remained the only telecommunications segment to use a different genre with 19 percent of advertising efforts using portals and search engines. cNew technologies such as VOIP continue to blur the lines between platforms and providers creating a hyper-competitive market for telecommunications services.<br><br> As a result, these companies are leveraging all available touch-points to counter increased pricing pressure with aggressive customer acquisition. With total online usage and broadband penetration reaching critical mass, the Internet has become an increasingly attractive marketing channel to reach this desirable target audience at a relatively low cost, d Jeffery said. Table 3: Top Advertising Genre for Telecommunications Segments, December 2004, (US, Home & Work) Genre Equipment Internet Telephony & Messaging ISP & Broadband Local & Long Distance Wireless Services Email 41% 80% 6% 19% 62% Portals & Search Engines 8% 2% 19% 9% 9% Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance, January 2005 ********************************************************* Nielsen//NetRatings reports December 2004 data for the Top Sites by Parent Company and Top Brands.<br><br> In addition, Nielsen//NetRatings reveals the Top Advertisers by Company for December 2004. Nielsen//NetRatings Top 10 Web Sites by Parent Company and Top 10 Web Sites By Brand Month of December 2004 Table 1. Top 10 Parent Companies, Table 2.<br><br> Top 10 Brands, Combined Home & Work Combined Home & Work Parent Unique Audience (000) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) Brand Unique Audience (000) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) 1. Microsoft 106,694 2:00:06 1. Yahoo!<br><br> 95,469 2:46:50 2. Time Warner 97,152 5:03:17 2. Microsoft 91,124 0:43:45 3.<br><br> Yahoo! 96,860 2:45:02 3. MSN 89,212 1:38:53 4.<br><br> Google 68,346 0:30:33 4. AOL 74,347 6:03:57 5. eBay 52,297 1:52:15 5.<br><br> Google 67,123 0:30:07 6. United States Government 49,849 0:23:46 6. eBay 50,882 1:48:10 7.<br><br> Amazon 46,187 0:28:25 7. Amazon 42,574 0:27:13 8. RealNetworks 34,705 0:36:01 8.<br><br> Real 34,118 0:35:19 9. InterActiveCorp 34,318 0:19:15 9. MapQuest 30,206 0:10:46 10.<br><br> Walt Disney Internet Group 31,478 0:40:12 10. Weather Channel 25,295 0:15:44 Example: The data indicates that 31.5 million home and work Internet users visited at least one of the Walt Disney Internet Group-owned sites or launched a Walt Disney Internet Group-owned application during the month, and each person spent, on average, a total of 40 minutes and 12 seconds at one or more of their sites or applications. A parent company is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single entity.<br><br> A brand is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content. Reach is a measure of the unduplicated audience that visits a property. The data is expressed as the percentage of the total universe of Internet users who logged onto the Internet at least once during the reporting period.<br><br> Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance Top 10 Advertisers Month of December 2004 Top advertisers, ranked by impressions, are based on data from AdRelevance, Nielsen//NetRatings' advertising research service. An impression is counted as the number of times an ad is rendered for viewing. Top 10 Advertisers by Company Advertiser* Impressions (000) 1.<br><br> SBC Communications, Inc. 3,434,349 2. Dell Computer Corporation 1,917,711 3.<br><br> Netflix, Inc. 1,556,816 4. LowerMyBills.com, Inc.<br><br> 1,548,338 5. InterActiveCorp 1,457,602 6. Verizon Communications, Inc.<br><br> 1,320,558 7. Orbitz 1,297,698 8. eBay, Inc.<br><br> 1,280,405 9. NetQuote/Auto Insurance Shopper, Inc. 1,211,615 10.<br><br> Ford Motor Company 1,143,522 *Impressions reported exclude house ads, which are ads that run on an advertiser 9s own Web property. Example: An estimated 1.1 billion Ford Motor Company ads were rendered for viewing during the surfing period. About Nielsen//NetRatings Nielsen//NetRatings, a service provided by NetRatings, Inc.<br><br> (Nasdaq: NTRT), is the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis and is the industry's premier source for online advertising intelligence with its NetView, AdRelevance, @Plan, WebRF, MegaPanel and SiteCensus services. Covering 70 percent of the world's Internet usage, the Nielsen//NetRatings services offer syndicated Internet and digital media research reports and custom-tailored data to help companies gain valuable insight into their business. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com .<br><br> Editor 9s Note: Please source all data to Nielsen//NetRatings. # # #

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