MediaPost: Ad Leaders 'Insinuate' Online Into Mix, Would Remain Insulated From Adware, Spyware

The American Advertising Federation published results from a survey that indicated advertisers are starting to treat online media as both a "traditional" and a larger part of their media budgets. According to the survey, major marketers spent more than eight percent of their budgets on the internet in 2004, and intend to double that next year. Those numbers don't match well with measured media statistics, which show that all marketers actually spent less than half of that this year. The marketers, showing perhaps both faulty and generous memories, also reported having spent more than five percent of their budgets on online ads in 2001, at the nadir of the dot-com bust. The study also found that when adware and spyware were lumped together as a category, about two thirds of advertisers opposed the marketing method.