DoubleClick says email ads are here to stay

SAN FRANCISCO: The head of one of the largest Internet advertising companies,

DoubleClick Inc, said on Monday that despite the industry's current softness, he

remained bullish on the outlook for Internet advertising in general, and e-mail

advertising in particular.

"We're feeling very bullish on the e-mail side right now," said

chief executive of the New York-based company, Kevin Ryan to investors at the

Robertson Stephens Technology Conference here. E-mail advertising, in which

plain ads are sent directly to consumers' e-mail address, or attached to other

e-mail messages, are increasingly seen as a highly effective marketing tool, and

are often less expensive than banner advertisements.

Ryan said e-mail advertising still makes up a tiny portion of DoubleClick's

business, but it is growing faster than other areas, like the banner ad market.

He estimated that e-mail advertising currently accounts for between five and ten

per cent of all Internet advertising. But this will eventually gain a 30-per

cent share.

Ryan also offered reasons for his optimism about the future growth of online

advertising. "There is only one way to determine if advertising will be

successful in a certain medium, and that is the size of the audience," he

said, referring to the continued growth in Internet use in the US and worldwide.

"Advertising has always followed the bodies. It follows with a lag, but

it always follows." Internet content sites will start squeezing more ads

onto each page. Advertising currently takes up about a quarter of the space on

Internet content sites, compared with 65 per cent in offline media like

magazines, he added.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001