E-commerce Web sites are spending more marketing and ad dollars in offline media as Internet use becomes a mainstream activity, according to a report by the research firm Intermarket Group, San Diego.
The report stated that only 14 percent of e-commerce companies focus their marketing and ad dollars exclusively online. Slightly more than half advertise in newspapers and 35 percent advertise on radio and television.
Such a strategy makes sense, the report states, considering that 25 percent of Web users located a site last year through a magazine ad, 14 percent used television commercials and 9 percent used a newspaper ad.
The report also revealed that the top 100 e-commerce sites last year spent an average of $8.6 million each on marketing in 1998. The top five spenders last year, according to the report, were Amazon.com Inc., $133.0 million; the ETrade Group Inc., $71.3 million; BarnesandNoble.com Inc., $70.4 million; CDNow Inc., $44.6 million; and Ameritrade Holding Corp., $43.6 million.
