Telcom companies fastest growing online advertisers
Nielsen//NetRatings reports the telecommunications industry, the fourth largest industry to advertise online, was the fastest growing industry year-over-year in online advertising, increasing six percentage points in share of impressions. Growth in other industries, including financial services, retail goods/services and Web media, remained flat. The findings were reported by Nielsen//NetRatings' AdRelevance service, which tracks advertising activity.
The wireless service segment led in online advertising with 52% of all telecommunications impressions in December 2004. The ISP/broadband segment came in second with 18% during the same timeframe while the local/long distance segment took 15% of impressions in December 2004. The share of advertising for these industry segments remained relatively the same as compared to 2003.
Rounding out the top five segments, Internet telephony/messaging secured
6% of telecommunications impressions during 2004, showing the greatest gains year-over-year of four percentage points from 2% of impressions in 2003. Equipment's share of impressions followed with 2% of telecommunications' online advertising in December 2004, declining from 7% in 2003.
SBC Communications led the telecommunications industry as the top advertiser with 32% of telecommunications impressions in December 2004, growing 22 percentage points year-over-year from 10% in December 2003. Verizon followed with 10% of impressions during December 2004, rising three percentage points year-over-year. Vonage also took 10% of impressions in December 2004, increasing eight percentage points year-over-year from 2% of impressions in December 2003. BellSouth garnered 6% of impressions in 2004, increasing five percentage points year-over-year from 1% of impressions in December 2003. Rounding out the top five, AT&T Wireless Services secured 5% of impressions in December 2004, declining 22 percentage points year-over-year from 27% of impressions.
"The 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" said Corey Jeffery, senior analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "The data above demonstrates that the online medium has proven to be uniquely successful, despite these pressures, at reaching the most desired target market for telecommunications customers."
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% of its advertising strategy via email, while the wireless services segment focused 62% of its advertisements via email. The equipment and local/long distance segments centered 41% and 19% of their advertising strategies on email, respectively. The ISP/broadband segment remained the only telecommunications segment to use a different genre with 19% of advertising efforts using portals and search engines.
"New technologies such as VOIP continue to blur the lines between platforms and providers creating a hyper-competitive market for telecommunications services. 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," Jeffery said.
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