22% of people on the Internet are reading this…..

..at least according to the 2009 Online Advertising Attitudes Report (via Paid Content) What they in fact say is that 22% of users only go to Niche, sector-specific destinations -like this blog- and only 25 (that’s right, 2%) visit mainstream sites.

The other salient point for us in the article is this:

“The study, which surveyed 2,013 UK adults, could show what we already knew through our own experience – it’s mighty easy to focus on content instead of web banners. Or the extent to which ads really do work could be under-reported by proud users who would rather say they ignored the pay-for spots. ”

This sets up a slight conflict of interest though- and one that we encounter daily- for as long as advertisiers continue to pay CPM rates for web banners, publishers will continue take that easy money, rather than demanding quality ad-funded content for their users. In this case the supply of ready-money to the publishers is shaping the demand of that market. At some point, the cart and the horse will probably need to be swapped around to achieve a better effect.

Posted by Kirk