An Audience of One Billion

At this time last year, the world had over 800 million Internet users and according to a December 26, 2004, press release from Internet World Stats we would hit the one billion mark by the end of 2005. Based on the current statistics on their Web site, it looks like they were correct and we will ring in the billionth online user concurrent with the upcoming New Year’s celebrations.

CNN is a little more generous. In an article dated, October 10, 2005, they said we had already reached the one billion mark. It is also interesting to note that articles as far back as 2001 concluded this would be the billion-user year.

Concomitant with the exponential increase in total worldwide online audience , e-commerce has also seen a stratospheric rise. And why not. In pre-Web media models, you had to pay more money to reach more potential eyeballs. That is not the case with the Web. Today on the Internet, your product or service has the possibility of being seen by 200 million more people than it did last year at this time, and you don’t have to pay a dime more to potentially reach this larger audience. This kind of increase in exposure in just one short year is astonishing, and it certainly bodes well for doing business via the Net.

Of course, just because your Web presence can be seen by growing numbers of people all over the world, it certainly does not guarantee it will be seen. Marketing still has to do the job of helping people find your company or organization and fortunately there is also a world of new tools to help do just that.