AdRelevance Begins Tracking Online Ads For Consumer Goods Industry

Growth in Advertising By Packaged Goods, Books and Apparel Manufacturers Now Closely Monitored

SEATTLE - November 1, 1999 - Want to know who's lagging behind in the online advertising race? Surprisingly, it's the very companies that made advertising ubiquitous in every medium from newspapers and magazines to radio and TV. While industries like financial services, retail and publishing have committed significant dollars to banner ads and pop-up windows, packaged goods companies - the same people who brought us whiter teeth, fresher breath and the dry look look - are just beginning to venture online.

That's the finding from AdRelevance Inc., the pioneer in tracking where, when, how and how much Web marketers and their competition are advertising online. The Seattle-based subsidiary of Media Metrix (NASDAQ: MMXI) today announced a new service designed to meet the needs of the consumer goods industry. The new category tracks a wide range of products by manufacturer (rather than retailer-distributor), including beauty supplies, drugs, toiletries, apparel, books, food, beverages, home and garden products, jewelry and accessories, automotive supplies, recreational gear, and toys.

"The consumer goods industry has always been one of the most powerful forces in traditional media, but it's been slow to get online," said Will Hodgman, president and CEO of AdRelevance. "Now that these companies have begun to advertise on the Web, they'll need real-time, comprehensive data that tells them how their competitors are marketing on the Internet."

In addition to the new consumer goods category, AdRelevance provides competitive online intelligence for eight industries, including automotive, financial services, PC hardware and consumer electronics, retail, software, telecommunications, travel, and Web media. According to Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research for AdRelevance, the reason consumer goods manufacturers have been slower to advertise online than companies in these other industries has a lot to do with the power of the buy button.

"Retailers were the first companies to commit serious dollars to Web advertising because ads could be linked to actionable sites like those of Amazon.com, Dell Computer and MicroWarehouse where products could be purchased online," said Buchwalter. "But consumer goods manufacturers emphasize branding and, for the most part, let distributors handle sales. It's taken a while for these companies to recognize what a powerful medium the Web can be for building their brands."

AdRelevance's data for September 1999 indicates that while more consumer goods companies advertised online than companies in any other manufacturing or service segment, the average number of impressions purchased by each company was a fraction of what was purchased by companies in other industries. For example, while 220 consumer goods companies advertised online compared with only 101 companies in the PC Hardware and Consumer Electronics (CE) industries, the average number of impressions purchased was only about 776,000 - less than 23 percent of the 3.4 million purchased by hardware and CE companies. Detail for all manufacturing and service industries is as follows:

Using AdRelevance
Using the AdRelevance Service, Web marketers can quickly and easily run reports that illustrate competitive advertising activity by a range of criteria including advertiser, product, industry, Web site location, creative, time period and technology. Additionally, reports can be analyzed by impression, unique ads, and rate card-equivalent spending. The result is an unparalleled ability to plan proactive online campaigns and make smarter media buying decisions.

The AdRelevance Technology
The AdRelevance Service is powered by the company's proprietary Online Media Network Intelligent Agent (OMNIAC ) technology. The innovative technology systematically combs the commercial universe of the Web searching for and capturing detailed data about advertising banners, promotions, sponsorships, text links and rich media 24 hours a day. Once captured, the data is warehoused, classified, statistically analyzed and correlated to AdRelevance's extensive Web traffic data. The OMNIAC technology was developed by the company's core development team, including engineers best known for developing the MetaCrawler search technology currently licensed to Go2Net and Jango, which was purchased by Excite in 1997.

About AdRelevance
AdRelevance, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Metrix, Inc. (NASDAQ: MMXI), the pioneer and leader in Internet and digital media measurement. Founded in 1998, the company's intelligent agent technology combs over 2,000 Web sites daily and evaluates 40 million page views monthly to provide comprehensive and in-depth advertising tracking information. Using the Ad Relevance Service, advertisers gain access to up-to-date intelligence about their competitors' online marketing communications programs, enabling them to quickly and easily compare and report information by a wide range of criteria including advertiser, product, message, industry, location, technology and creative. More information on the company and an interactive demonstration of its service is available at www.adrelevance.com or by calling 1-888-649-6540.