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Industry has discovered the Internet. Or rather: re-discovered it. Following the sometimes drastic cuts in Internet budgets between 2000 and 2003, since mid-2004 companies have started to gradually expand their commitment to the Internet again. There is a growing awareness that budget cuts in the interactive channels were often exaggerated. The controllers are doing their sums and are surprised to note that expanding web-based communication and sales platforms is increasingly becoming worthwhile. This is new. But this development has not come out of the blue:

• The reach of the medium is growing continuously. In the third quarter of 2005 64 % of all German adults had access to the Internet (cf. Fig. 1). Although the growth is slowing down in pure quantity terms, the quality of online use is changing rapidly. The triumphal success of broadband connections (DSL), flat rates and wireless LAN networks (WLANs) in households and public buildings is rapidly shifting media use towards the Internet. People are online more often and for longer, and they use the net more intensively – especially to find out about products and services and how to obtain them easily and at low cost.
• With penetration of over 80 % in the young target groups, the Internet is increasingly overtaking television and the print media in terms of media relevance. The Internet is becoming the basic medium for the advertising industry and for some brand owners it is already the leading medium. Online advertising turnover in the amount of € 750 million is expected for 2005 (cf. Fig. 2). Within the next four years, the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) is expecting expenditure for online advertising in Europe to treble. At the same time, the principle of purely performance-based invoicing for online advertising (“performance marketing”) introduced by search engines like Google has allowed many e-commerce providers to manage the costs of new customer acquisition in economically reasonable performance-oriented manner for the first time.
• In recent years the cuts in Internet budgets have often been part of comprehensive cost reduction programmes for many companies. Now, all potential has been exploited here and effects on the profit side can be achieved only by increases on the turnover side. For many companies today the Internet is the sales route with the highest growth proportionately. Additional investments in this channel are therefore the most efficient way of better exploiting existing customer relations and winning new customer segments.

E-commerce has become a hot topic again, and so has the need for professional services in this environment.