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MSN.com, the big winner in December online advertising

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CIOL Bureau
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PALO ALTO: Microsoft Corp's MSN.com Internet portal was the big winner in the

online advertising market last December, thanks largely to a large share of

business from Amazon.com Inc., a new study shows.

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The New York research group AdRelevance reported Monday that MSN brought in

the most ad revenue during December ($180 million), even though rival portal

Yahoo! Inc served up the most ads.

Advertising rates vary substantially, even among major Internet portals, and

can depend partly on the terms negotiated as well as the value of the property,

or the particular Web pages, where the ads are placed.

AdRelevance said that Yahoo! was the number two recipient of ad spending in

December, bringing in $118 million, followed by America Online Inc's Netscape

portal, ExciteAtHome Corp's excite.com site, and the search site iWon.com.

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In December 1999, Yahoo! received the most ad spending of any Internet site,

followed by MSN.com. Netscape had ranked seventh at that time and Excite had

ranked ninth.

MSN's success attracting advertisers at a time of severe marketing cutbacks

seems to reflect its decision to focus on a handful of big spenders, said

Charlie Buchwalter, vice president of media research for AdRelevance.

"It looks like they really focused on going after a few of the top

advertisers, and Amazon was one of them," Buchwalter said.

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AdRelevance found that Amazon.com was the biggest online advertiser, placing

more than three billion ad impressions in December.

However, Amazon's spending on Yahoo! had dropped significantly since

September, when Yahoo! made rival bookseller Barnesandnoble.com the featured

merchant on its site.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.

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