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Technology Stocks : Aahh...iNEXTV (AXC) The NEXT Thing! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hal Campbell who wrote (3750)	5/17/2001 2:16:49 PM
From: killybegs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4169

Internet's Ad Glass Half Full. RICHARD COLE 04/30/2001 Cable World Page 50 Copyright 2001 Gale Group Inc. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 2001 Intertec Publishing Corporation, A PRIMEDIA Co. Closing on cable with video "T is either a feast or a famine," my Irish grandfather used to say, and few starker examples exist than the financial fate of the Internet. Rates dropping from $30 per thousand views down to $5, the evaporation of banner ads, and with them, the collapse of Web companies that discovered venture capital must eventually be replaced with earnings. But let's keep things in perspective. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau -- the new name of the Internet Advertising Bureau -- Web ad revenue for the year 2000 hit $8.2 billion. Other organizations put the figure lower, but the IAB makes a persuasive argument that its accounting is more inclusive. Regardless of which measurement you use, however, all metrics show the same trends. Most attention has focused on the IAB's fourth-quarter figures of $2.2 billion, which represent an anemic -- for the Web -- gain of only 9% over the third quarter, despite the holiday season. But in this case, the famine also can be looked at as a feast, or at least a hearty meal, compared to other media sectors. Roughly $2.2 billion may have disappointed optimistic analysts, but it represents a 30% gain over the final quarter of 1999. No small Irish potatoes there, and far better than any other media sector is likely to report. And that gain came despite the meltdown of the dot-com sector and online ad spending, which still accounts for a major share of Net advertising, to say nothing of the pre-recession of the last few months of 2000. Most importantly, the annual figure of $8.2 billion represents 80% of cable advertising revenue for the year 2000. Not bad for a medium that didn't exist a decade ago. That said, it is clear the Net's banner-ad business model has been shattered. Advertising agencies simply don't believe banner ads work. They've determined that the Net is a direct-buy medium and, unlike television, won't serve as a means of branding their product. But that doesn't mean they're right. In this week's Cable World, we look at Ampex 's iNEXTV , one of the more slickly packaged quasi-television sites on the Internet. Click on Shari Belafonte's travel show, and when the video runs, there's an Enterprise Rent-A-Car television ad embedded in the streaming. Ampex chairman/CEO Edward J. Bramson, like many in and out of the Net sector, say streaming video ads can do what banner ads cannot: help advertisers with branding. And unlike the broad demographics of television, the Internet selects by interest, giving advertisers access to customers who already have an affinity for their product or service. Perhaps most importantly, this evolving switch to video advertising comes at a time when the broadband Internet -- and therefore the effectiveness of streaming video -- is in its infancy. If broadband subscribers reach the 40 million to 50 million mark by 2005, as many researchers project, Net advertisers will have access to an enormous audience. And the Net's already at 80% ...