Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

The Age of the “e” 3
jected to produce $830 billion in revenues in 2000, a 58% increase
over 1999.
The Internet economy directly supports more than 3.088 million
workers. Total employment at Internet economy companies grew
10% between the first quarter of 1999 and the first quarter of
2000. The Internet economy is creating jobs in numerous areas—
and seven of every ten jobs created are traditional, not high-tech
jobs. The job function generating the most Internet-related employment
is sales and marketing (33%), with IT jobs at only 28%.
The report 2000 Economic Impact: U.S. Direct & Interactive Marketing
Today, issued by the Direct Marketing Association (www.thedma.org),
says U.S. consumers and businesses spent over $24 billion as
a result of direct marketers’ online media expenditures in 2000. Direct
marketers spent $2.8 billion on interactive media marketing in 2000,
up from over $1.6 billion in 1999. This, as the report emphasizes, is in
spite of a weaker economy and dot-com failures.
The third annual America Online/Roper Starch Cyberstudy, conducted
in August 2000 among a random sample of over 1,000 adult
online users, suggested significant positive shifts in Internet acceptance.
For the first time ever, more than half of the survey respondents said
they shop online, nearly double the percentage who did so two years
ago. More than half the respondents would be interested in using a
small Internet device to go online from any room in their house; close to
half log onto their home accounts even when they are away from home;
and two thirds of the respondents would be interested in checking out a
Web site they’d seen on TV without leaving their TV to find it.
The Wired World
Today the Internet is already a mature medium, despite its newcomer
status. It is certainly the technology area with the most significant and
explosive growth ever. In 1998 and 1999, the Internet’s economic impact
on the U.S. economy was clearly proven just by the amount of
venture capital invested in Internet companies and by the number of
successful Internet company IPOs launched. By early 1999, Internet IPOs
had dominated the stock market, creating another round of young bil-