European Ad Expenditures Up in August

Total European online advertising revenue for the month of August nearly $110 million, up 11 percent from July’s total, according to data collected by AdZone Interactive.

Almost $65 million of the revenue was generated by UK sites, but the increase for UK sites was only 1 percent over July, while the increase for the rest of Europe was 31 percent. AdZone tracked 452 sites from the countries of Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

According to Forrester Research, the UK’s online advertising market is Europe’s largest, not, as some had believed, Germany.

In June, all online advertising in Germany totaled DM 16,230,000, and Bertelsmann was far and away the country’s leading advertiser spending DM 1,244,000 — 8 percent of the total market. The second highest German online advertiser was Primus, spending DM 473,000 Bertelsmann was also the UK’s biggest online ad spender at DM 565,000 in June, but its percentage of the market was far lower at 2.3 percent.

“The German online ad market is significantly smaller than we thought,” said William Reeve, group director of European Data Products. “German media companies and advertising agencies have greatly exaggerated the size of the market estimating that firms would spend upwards of DM 500 million on online advertising this year — but that figure will be much nearer DM 300 million. In the UK, by contrast, Forrester expects online advertising spend to be nearer DM 400 million.”

One reason for an exaggerated sense of the German market’s size, according to Forrester, lies in the assumptions that companies would launch pan-European online ad campaigns — which have so far not materialized. Also, financial-services advertising in Germany has not been as robust as it has in the UK, where there has been fierce competition between traditional banks and online entrants to the market. While Germany has some of the same competition, its state-run banks do far less advertising than incumbents in the UK.

“Advertising is still relatively local, even on the Internet,” Reeve said. “The same sort of logistical problems that stymie cross-border offline campaigns also apply to the online world. Also, the media market in Germany is small enough that estimates of the market’s size came from the biggest online publishers getting together and comparing the kind of money they were spending on online ads. Their estimates were more about what everyone wanted the market to be, rather than what it really is.”

Top 10 Brands on European Sites August 2000
Rank	Brand	Expenditure	Impressions
1.	Zonejeux.com	$6,481,700	634,423,900
2.	Virginmoney.com	$3,313,000	74,069,400
3.	Autosport.com	$2,687,600	60,537,300
4.	Amazon.co.uk	$2,149,300	59,970,100
5.	Yahoo.com Europe Shopping	$1,949,000	49,973,900
6.	Yahoo.com Chat UK	$1,694,800	50,976,800
7.	Insure.co.uk	$1,596,900	40,946,500
8.	Yahoo.com Mail	$1,485,700	38,093,600
9.	SAT1.ch	$1,272,000	19,874,900
10.	ESPN.go.com	$1,022,700	36,525,200
	Total	$23,652,700	1,065,391,600
Source: AdZone Interactive

Top 10 European Sites for Ad Revenue August 2000
Rank	Site	Revenue	Impressions
1.	francite.com	$6,289,300	628,927,400
2.	uk.yahoo.com	$5,340,500	136,935,700
3.	iii.co.uk	$4,593,600	102,079,300
4.	sports.com	$3,412,000	72,596,500
5.	freeserve.com	$3,081,100	68,467,800
6.	uk.chat.yahoo.com	$3,075,700	78,864,500
7.	multimania.fr	$2,854,000	40,946,500
8.	uk.shopping.yahoo.com	$2,539,200	65,106,700
9.	uk.weather.yahoo.com	$2,220,400	88,816,200
10.	uk.sports.yahoo.com	$2,184,700	56,019,100
	Total	$35,590,500	1,440,511,000
Source: AdZone Interactive