CNET: Spending for online content rises in 2003
It's those Mac users again
Spending for subscriptions and other online content grew rapidly last year, but enormous gains in the dating category masked a decline in reported entertainment spending. Dating sites saw revenues rise to almost half a billion dollars from about 300 million dollars the year before. Business and investment products grew about ten percent in revenues. Entertainment counts were down about $14 million to $214 million.
But the study's authors, the Online Publishers Association and comScore Networks, noted that the methodology may be weak in the entertainment category, where it only measured browser behavior. Apple's iTunes and some other entertainment-oriented platforms went unmeasured in the study. iTunes sold about $50 million of songs in that same period.
