This Ad Age article reveals a quite astounding fact. The top ten internet players in the US market nabbed 70% of all net online ad revenue in 2006. Represent it as gross ad revenue and that’s 99% that the top ten account for. That’s up (yes up) from 95% in 2005. In the UK, i-level have long been making noise about a similar imbalance, claiming that 80% plus of UK online ad spend goes on the top ten players here.
There is a fantastic irony in the fact that whilst most businesses are frantically trying to adapt their business models to cope with the changing economic world characterised by the LongTail, online advertising is going the other way. The internet is a ‘medium’ that delivers a vastly broad reach, yet offers micro- targeting potential that is more precise than any other (both in terms of context and user). So how come such a high proportion of revenue is directed to such a few selling points?
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