Despite Long Tail Predictions for Online Ads, Top 10 Get 72% of Revenue, AdAge
Despite
the talk about how the democratizing web has opened a brave new long
tail (coined by Wired Editor Chris Anderson) world for
Internet ad dollars, the top 10 companies online accounted for 72% of all
interactive ad revenue last year, up from 71% in 2004, according to
Interactive Advertising Bureau's analysis of revenue by company size, reports
AdAge in "The Short Tail: Big Players Still Dominate Online Ad
Sales".
Similar to the TV's Big Four environment,
the online world has turned into the Big Four of its own - Google, Yahoo,
MSN and AOL - dwarfing other online players. According to the IAB
numbers, the top 5 account for more than half of all spending.
Gokul Rajarum, Google AdSense product manager, found that the top half of
the tail has more than doubled from 2,000 sites to 4,000 since November
2003, making more room on the other end in the wake of blogs and community
sites.
But some companies are looking to even the playing field. One of those is Quantcast,
which is able to measure site demographics more deeply by using a pixel
technology that tracks what visitors frequent online. Another player HitTail
is trying to help the small site owners to leverage long tail in natural
search.
Blogosphere on Long Tail vs. Short Tail:
- The Long Tail: Review And Interview With Chris Anderson
- Combined Network Power of Blogs
- HitTail: The Long Tail As Muse
- Natural Search: Long Tail Success & Short Tail Misunderstandings
- Online Advertising Dollars Reveal Short Tail
