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Jack Brotherton jokes about the good ol' days of the Internet: "That was six months ago."
As chief executive officer of Dana-Foran Marketing Communications in Sacramento, Brotherton is having to adapt to this rapidly developing medium. Six years .ago, it didn't exist; today it's at least a consideration as companies plan their advertising budgets.
Traditional advertising and public relations agencies in Sacramento are taking a variety of approaches to using the new tool - from a cautious wait-and-see stance to full-blown specialization in Web marketing.
Internet advertising still represents a sliver of the total advertising industry. like television 50 years ago, it's having to prove itself as a new medium.
But - like everything else about the Internet it's use as an advertising vehicle is definitely on the rise. Internet advertising revenue totaled $2.1 billion last year and is expected to rise to $7 billion in 2002. It reached $693 million for the first quarter of this year, almost double the $351 million of last year's first quarter, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.
The Internet captured 50 million users in its first five years, according to a Morgan Stanley report. That's eight years faster than television did as a new medium. And marketers can practically hear the cash register ring when they see the demographics - Internet users generally are young, well-educated and earn high incomes.
DanaForan is one of the local agencies embracing the new technology. It is aggressively pitching its services to ecommerce companies, Brotherton said. Recently it signed on Internet service provider JPS.net as a new client, and is close to signing contracts with pure "dotcom" companies.
Rather than developing Internet technology expertise internally, the agency formed a strategic alliance with software giant Microsoft...