To: D PARKER who wrote (614 ) 2/19/1998 4:09:00 PM From: D PARKER Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 18444
WARNING !!! PURE OPINION AND SPECULATION FOLLOWS: I think that we are witnessing the birth of a new industry here, INTERNET ADVERTISING. As the number of personal and business computer owners increase, the size of the group also increases (!). There will be a massive worldwide market of diverse, educated, computer literate people with money to spend. This is a marketers dream. Although a few businesses are just starting to recognize the potential of this market, it mostly unrecognized and untouched and unexploited (from a business point of view). There is an effort by researchers to identify who, where, what and how this market will affect the future of business. Concerning the status of web advertising, I see two broad groups. -The first group is the proprietary web advertiser who owns and manages their own web site. They design and implement their own ads for their own business. There are some big players here (they have sufficient resources to do it). -The second group contains everyone else: large, mid and small cap businesses without the knowledge, expertise, time or other resources to handle the move to the web and web pages for individuals and other groups that need a web presence. The companies that are in the business of offering web advertising expertise are few and infantile, there are no mature web advertising companies now, the industry is too new, but that will change..... and real soon. Doubleclick is making a big splash with their IPO. That will focus attention on this new industry and will cause growth, mergers, studies, more research, increasing share price for public companies, new advertising business coming "on line", new ad models, refinement of existing techniques, etc. etc.... I expect a "Microsoft" type web advertiser to emerge out of this birth of a new industry. The problem from an investors point of view is to find it before it increases to $100 and splits 27 times. Doubleclick (DCLK) is an obvious possibility along with Zulu-tek (NETZ), Aptex subsidiary (HNCS), CKS group (CKSG), and don't forget the non-public companies, etc... (I am sure there are more). ZULU-TEK has been very quiet of late (they have a lot of work to do), but I think bringing in someone for Investor Relations would be a very good investment for the company. Whether NETZ becomes a "Microsoft", gets eaten up by another company, or just falls by the wayside, THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY WILL MOVE INTO THE WEB BIG TIME!!!!!!! The above is my opinion, it is my speculation, it is not intended to be used by anyone for investment purposes. I do hold stock in ZULU-TEK, but I am not compensated by the company in any manner whatsoever. I am just an individual investor.... Dave