Net now the top media for senior managers

Advertising executives may be missing a big trick if they overlook the Internet in their planning. A survey released by Research.Net for Forbes.com this week showed that senior executives spend an average of 16 hours online.

This online figure for c-level executives - chairman, chief executives, and so on - compares with the 8.6 hours they spend watching TV and 6.6 hours reading newspapers and magazines. Moreover, the business leaders surveyed responded positively to online advertising.

They were also more likely to go to the Internet for business and financial information than any other source, and 64% admitted to visiting eight or more websites a week to get such news.

But surely this pattern holds true for the United States and not the Middle East? Not necessarily so. AMEInfo interviewed one of the region's most senior bankers this week, and was informed that AMEInfo was one of the few websites that he visited every day.

The spectacular rise in viewer figures for the AMEInfo daily financial news also confirm that executives are viewing the news more and more on the Web. Since February 2001 the monthly page views in the financial news section have quadrupled to 441,000, and a total of 80,004 people used the website in February this year.

Moreover, this rapid growth in readership can not be put down to the growth of the Internet itself. For the Net is growing fast in the Middle East, but not that fast. What seems to be happening is a qualitative and quantitative shift in reader habits.

It is not hard to see why. Financial news on the Internet is often more up-to-date than a newspaper, which has to be printed overnight. Financial information such as stock prices can be in real-time. And even commentaries will be online as fast as journalists can manage to write them.

Senior executives are merely choosing the best and most immediate source of news and business information, and that is online. Advertisers should sit up and take notice that if they stick solely to the traditional media, they could be loosing their target audience.