Benchmarking the Bounce Back

摘要

Excuse me for breaking the silence, but has anyone noticed that the Web is back? Over the course of the past year at least, many online consumer content brands (and a handful of business publishers as well) have quietly reported double-digit revenue gains each quarter. For the month of January 2004 alone, NY Times Digital reported a striking 42% increase in ad revenues over January 2002, which exemplified similar gains among other major media brands online. CBS MarketWatch, Slate, CNet, and TheStreet.com, among others, reported reaching or maintaining profitability during 2003. After the over-hyped Web "revolution" of the late '90s, and a post-bubble ethos in which investors, advertisers, and analysts fled the Internet faster than the Democrats tossed Howard Dean out of the boat, everyone I speak to in the industry is loathe to admit what the numbers clearly demonstrate. Web content―or at least some important sectors of the digital content economy― has waged a quiet but remarkable comeback. The real benchmark of the Web's return came a few months ago, when the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) tallied ad sales receipts for the last quarter of 2003 and found that online.