Telecom Industry Is Fastest-Growing Online Advertiser

The telecommunications industry was the fastest growing industry in online advertising, increasing six percentage points in 2004 over the previous year in share of impressions, according to the Nielsen//NetRatings' AdRelevance service.

The wireless segment of the industry accounted for the bulk of advertising, with 52 percent of all telecommunications impressions in December 2004. In second place was the ISP/broadband segment, with 18 percent, and the local/long distance segment was in third with 15 percent of impressions.

SBC Communications was the overall top advertiser in the telecommunications, with 32 percent of telecommunications impressions in December 2004, growing 22 percentage points year-over-year from ten percent in December 2003. Verizon Communications, Inc. had ten percent of impressions during December 2004, rising three percentage points year-over- year. Vonage Holdings Corp. also had ten percent of impressions in December 2004, increasing eight percentage points year-over-year from two percent of impressions in December 2003.

Email sites, including Juno Email, MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, were the most popular advertising genre for the telecommunications industry. The Internet telephony/messaging segment executed 80 percent of its advertising strategy using email, while the wireless services segment has 62 percent of its advertisements via email. 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.