Hurry on over to DoubleClick’s (free) knowledge center. If you haven’t already seen it, you can download the Q4 2004 Email Trend Report released in March 2005. Highlight: the average open rate for HTML emails continues to decline. It’s now 32.6%.
In addition, DoubleClick’s director of research Rick Bruner (he also runs BusinessBlogConsulting.com) has just published a new 22-page report: The Decade in Online Advertising: 1994 – 2004. Rick has posted his favorite chart from the report here. It’s a trip through history, starting with Mosaic in 1993 and a flatline for number of Internet users and dollars of Internet ad revenue. By the end of 2004, Internet ad revenues were $9.6 billion and number of U.S. Internet users was about 170 million. Most notable stat: no medium since B&W television has penetrated U.S. households as fast as the Internet. It took only 8 years. Compared with 9 years for radio, 10 for the VCR, 17 for personal computers, 39 for cable TV and 70 for the telephone. I.e. the Internet was virtally unheard of just over a decade ago. (There’s also a good section with blog stats.) Hey Rick, a great report! Looks like your day job suits you.