Online advertisers ‘look to single-site placement’

The success of advertising networks such as Google’s AdSense and AOL’s Platform-A hides the fact that many online advertisers would rather target individual sites, it has been revealed.

JupiterResearch has published figures showing that less than a quarter (23 per cent) of webmasters consider such networks to be more cost-effective than having promotional messages hosted on specific websites.

However, the analyst suggests that the majority of businesses are in some sort of contract with an ad-serving company, accounting for a quarter of all expenditure on online advertising.

The report notes that increasing budgetary allocations for online campaigns have also seen the introduction of complementary services such as mobile and video advertising.

Earlier research by industry analyst comScore showed that AOL’s Platform-A has the widest audience reach within the online advertising industry.

In March 2008, 90.7 per cent of internet users were served an advertisement from the network, compared with an 80.9 per cent audience reach for Google’s delivery systems.