It's important to anyone who invests. With people like Bhasin watching their portfolios decline almost as closely as they watched them grow, advertising for financial media and financial Web sites is strong. Internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix said that, despite the dramatic fall in overall dot-com ad spending, advertising revenues for the online financial news sector have more than doubled over the last year. Site visits up Unique site visitors to financial news Web sites were slightly up, by about 1.2 percent, in February over last year, notwithstanding the 22.4 percent drop in the Nasdaq during that month, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
Individual sites are mixed with respect to numbers of visitors per month.
In February 2000, CBS Marketwatch had more than 3 million users who accessed the site at least once during the month. This February, that number fell to less than 80,000. In contrast, privately-held Motley Fool has seen an increase of 31 percent in its monthly visitors over February last year, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. CNBC reported a 3 percent gain in household viewership between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. in February compared with a year earlier. The modest rise does not measure viewership in offices, health clubs, and restaurants, where CNBC viewership is most popular.