In its first survey of advertising for the online entertainment industry, MediaMetrix‘ (MMXI) AdRelevance on Tuesday released report in which casinos were, by far, the dominant advertisers in the ategory.
According to the report, casinos accounted for 190 million impressions during the month of February. The next biggest category, television, only had 66 million impressions during the month. Movies came next, with 30 million impressions. Together, these three accounted for 90 percent of total impressions in the entertainment ads placed in the last six months, according to AdRelevance.
Lycos (LCOS) , AltaVista, and CNNSi were the ones benefiting most from entertainment ads, according to the report. Lycos garnered 25 million impressions in February, while AltaVista was close behind with 24 million. CNNSi brought in 20 million impressions in the category.
Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research at AdRelevance, believes entertainment players are increasingly promoting their offerings online.
“By using the Internet, consumers are able to make more informed decisions about entertainment than they have in the past,” he said.
“For example, instead of viewing an ad in a newspaper and getting only a small sense of what a movie’s about, movie studios are enabling consumers to go online, click a banner ad promoting a new movie and access a streaming media trailer.”
With the addition of the entertainment category, AdRelevance says it’s now tracking more than 93 percent of all Internet ads.