Ad Exec Says Net A Secondary Medium

Winston Fletcher, chairman of the UK advertising agency Delaney Fletcher Bozell, noted that the Internet fails to offer advertisers the opportunity to grab peoples attention and interest them in new products.

So it will never be a significant advertising medium for the great majority of consumer goods and services, Fletcher said in a commentary in the Financial Times.

In the three months to June of this year, worldwide Internet advertising totalled $45 million. Total Internet advertising in 1996 could well reach $200 million and even double to $400 million in 1997, Fletcher said.

But Internet advertising remains a minute fraction of global advertising spending.

 

In the UK alone, about $450 million a year is spent on radio advertising, accounting for only 2.7 per cent of total advertising expenditure in the country.

So the Net still has a way to go before its blood-curdling threats to decimate traditional advertising media need be taken too seriously, Fletcher said.

That is because, despite all the hype, the Internet has not made much headway with traditional big spenders.

There are about 48 million Net surfers worldwide, including 30 million World Wide Web users.

According to British Telecommunications 300,000 Britons regulary surf the Net, a figure that BT sees rising to four million by the year 2000.

Even if that four million figure is reached, it would mean that only eight per cent of the UKs adult and teen-age population would be Net users