Top portals charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for prime slots

[Tags: interactivepr, pr]. The latest Online Publishers Association mailing contains the following interesting bulletin about prices for advertising on the top portals:

Top portal ad space sold out; price approaches Super Bowl
There is a new endangered species online: Premium ad spots on the major portals. That's according to a major story in the Wall Street Journal that found a serious supply issue for big display ads at Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Because demand is high and supply is low, prices for these spots are up, with Yahoo and AOL raising rates by double-digit percentages over last year. MSN said it's charging between several hundred thousand dollars and $1 million for prime 24-hour slots on its home page. The money quote came from OMD Digital exec Sean Finnegan: "It's starting to get into Super Bowl territory." Even remnant inventory on smaller sites is in higher demand, with prices there rising 3% even though there's no shortage of inventory.

The Journal found that many major portals and auto sites were selling their inventory up to 18 months in advance, locking in rates and perhaps hurting their chances for a higher rate down the line. The fact that premium online ads are being sold like the TV upfront shows that "online has indeed moved to the grownup's table," AOL's head of ad sales Michael Barrett told WSJ. Investor's Business Daily's Doug Tsuruoka wrote that the huge boom in online advertising was coming at the expense of TV and newspapers, which have been losing market share and viewership. "The trend means a sea change for TV and newspapers," he wrote. "It's forcing the nation's biggest newspapers to cut staff and forcing all old media to adapt to battle the Internet's new media players."

»	Top Web Sites Build Up Ad Backlog, Raise Rates (WSJ; paid subscription required)
»	Internet's Ad Gains Bringing Bad News To Newspapers, TV (Investor's Business Daily)
»	Websites Ads "Sold Out" (iMedia Connection)
»	Online ad sales soaring, report says (CNN Money)