Overall the discussion focused around where the industry is now, what 1998 will bring us and where we are headed in the next five years, along with what will be needed in order to legitimize online advertising as a medium and attract the deep-pocket budgets of larger advertisers. The panel was in general agreement that this medium still has a long way to go before it can legitimately compete for dollars spent on print or television advertising. I think most of us on this list would agree that there are several issues that are blocking the growth of ad spending to this medium. They are looking for concrete data that just isn't there yet, and that's why only a small portion of their budget is shifted toward online advertising. From an advertiser's standpoint, yes, we can go to a site and tell what type of audience uses it, what type of viewers may see the ads and which sites would be the best buys to target a specific audience.
Some sites do register their visitors.
Larger advertisers new to the Web love numbers. They want to know that they are reaching an audience of males, age 21-32 who bought a car three years ago and are in the market for a new one. They want concrete numbers that tell them the reach of their advertisements and they want to be able to compare this to a print or television campaign's cost and effectiveness before they decide to shift more ad dollars to the Web. And this is perhaps part of the problem. The Web isn't television advertising.