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Doubleclicks Fourth Quarter Ad Serving Report Reveals That Conversion Rates for Online Advertising Remain Strong Particularly for Rich Media

Continued Positive Trends Portend a Strong Year for Online Advertising in 2004

New York, NY, 2/5/2004 - DoubleClick Inc. (Nasdaq: DCLK), the leading provider of marketing tools for advertisers, direct marketers and web publishers, today announced results of its Q4 2003 Ad Serving Trend Report. This global data is useful as benchmarking statistics for advertisers as it represents one of the largest pools of information from both publishers and advertisers on ads served during a given period.
Overall, the data revealed that direct response rates (or click-throughs) have declined, likely due to increased volumes of advertising online, but conversion rates remain strong, particularly for ads executed with rich media. Conversion is defined as a user taking some kind of action according to the goals of the advertiser (a sale, web traffic, member registration etc).

Best Web Hosting DoubleClicks latest Ad Serving Trend Report reflects what weve been seeing for the past few quarters, particularly that online advertising is driving conversion for marketers. We know, for example, that the holiday season was particularly strong for online retailers and many of them successfully used online advertising as a vehicle, said Doug Knopper, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Advertiser & Publisher Solutions at DoubleClick. Specifically, we continue to see that rich media generates exceptional results, especially when we analyze its latent impact on conversion. In other words, many users tend to take some action after having viewed a rich media ad within thirty days of viewing the ad. These results all point to extremely positive news for the online advertising industry as we kick off 2004.

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Top Web Hosting RICH MEDIA: VOLUME AND CONVERSION RATES
The data revealed that rich media usage grew to nearly 40% of all ads served in the DoubleClick system: a 60% increase from Q4 02. Rich media is defined as dynamic ads that fly across web pages, pop-ups, and any ad that includes Macromedia Flash creative technology. DoubleClicks rich media inventory tends to be higher than the industry average due to the large number of top advertiser clients who are making the investment in rich media. Currently, less than 2 percent of DoubleClick rich media inventory consists of pop-ups.

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Web Hosting Companies In addition, rich media continues to display stronger conversion rates than non rich media (GIFs and JPEG ads). As compared to non-rich media, it generates higher rates of post-impression activity per impression (1.11% vs. .43% for non-rich media) and post- impression sales per those activities of 2.30% vs. 1.47%: The data confirms that consumers are more likely to take some kind of action after viewing, but not clicking on, a rich media unit and those activities are more likely to result in some kind of a sale.

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Web Site Design And Hosting Significantly, click-through rates for rich media in Q4 2003, at 1.24 %, remain higher than some direct response rates in traditional media. For example, the rate of return for catalogues is currently 0.37% according to Abacus, a division of DoubleClick Inc, and a leading data and research provider to the direct marketing industry.

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Email Web Hosting DIRECT RESPONSE VERSUS LONGER TERM MARKETING GOALS
Similarly, like rich media, online ads in general are showing a latent branding impact on the user. Q4 data showed that overall click-through rates continued to decline, which likely reflects a maturation of the industry and dramatically increased volumes, but also that many marketers have goals beyond direct response. This is evidenced by the fact that view-through rates, which assess users who have converted within 30 days of having viewed, but not clicked on, a banner, are still higher than click through rates.

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Web Hosting Plans LEADERBOARDS TAKE ON THE BANNER; SURPASS THE SKYSCRAPER
The number of different ad sizes available online today continues to be problematically high nearly 11,000 different ad sizes were served this past quarter. However, the clear leaders in adoption include the banner, the leaderboard, skyscrapers and large rectangles. While the standard 468 x 60 banner continues to dominate, it has experienced flat growth year over year, with the leaderboard making fast gains. Its now the second most common size at 7.7% of total ads served and surpassed the skyscraper to assume this slot. Usage of skyscrapers, however, rose 20% from Q4 02, while large rectangle adoption doubled.

Web And Email Hosting In terms of response rates for different ad formats, square pop-ups achieve highest immediate response rates, while the standard banner also ranks high. Overall, its more likely that clicks correlate better to the quality of the creative and the marketers intent than the size of the ad.

Web Hosting Compare ONLINE ADVERTISING VOLUME CONTINUES TO INCREASE
The volume of ads served in the DoubleClick system in Q4 increased 43% over Q3 from 172 billion to 203.8 billion the highest its been since 2001.

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The DoubleClick Q4 2003 Ad Serving Trend Report contains aggregate data from DoubleClicks DART for Advertisers and DART for Publishers online advertising serving technology. The data is based on over 1.3 trillion ads globally from thousands of clients served since Q1 of 2002. This report includes global numbers (North and South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific) along with specific data for EMEA/APAC. For the executive summary, please visit Knowledge Central at www.doubleclick.com/us/knowledge.

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