The Internet is the first truly global medium providing information and entertainment to people around the world. Whereas television, radio and print content are local or national, content on the Internet is international. This presents enormous opportunities for international communication researchers. Research can examine Internet issues as they naturally occur in nations around the world. Issues such as message content, audience characteristics or initial development, are addressed in this study. This is a first step in filling a gap in international research.

Although the Internet has been a popular medium in the United States for almost five to six years, it has just gained popularity in Asia during the last two to three years. Many reports have discussed general information about Internet technology and Web advertising in the United States and Asian Pacific Rim countries. However, very little comparison has been made to understand the extent of new media technology coverage in advertising related publications in these two regions. Such a comparison could provide an in-depth look at how the advertising industry is reacting to the explosive developments in technology from different parts of the world. Therefore, the goal of this study was to make an initial attempt to compare the Internet and online advertising coverage in the United States and one Asian country, Taiwan, by content analyzing all Internet related articles in the Advertising Age magazine in both countries from January 1996 to June 1997.


Background Information

According to Chen (1997), by the end of 1996, there were 186 countries connected to the Internet. While there were about 26.4 million Internet users worldwide at the end of 1995 (Chen, 1997), IDG Media Research Co. predicted the number of Internet users will exceed 200 million worldwide by the year 1999 (Yu, 1996). Worldwide, Japan had the highest percentage (18.4%) of households with personal computers connected to Internet as of the fourth quarter of 1996. The others were the United States (16.0%), Germany (11.7%), Hong Kong (11.7%) and Taiwan (10.3%) (Chen, 1997). The World Wide Web (WWW) is the major arena in the Internet world today. It is a distributed hypermedia system with a vast collection of interconnected documents that can be accessed through hypermedia servers and browsers (Thomas Boutell and Boutell Com. Inc. 1996).

With the growing popularity of the Internet, Web advertising is rapidly becoming a new media opportunity for advertisers as can be seen in the increase of Web advertising spending. There was a 66% increase in ad spending from the first quarter to the second quarter of 1997 (Nua Ltd., 1997c). Active Media (1997) predicted that online advertising dollars will amount to 11% of the global advertising revenues by the year 2000. Banner advertising currently accounts for 80% of the online ad spending. However, Jupiter Communications (1997b) predicted that it would diminish to 50% in the year of 2001. It further predicted that 25% of online ad spending will be in the form of sponsorships and another 25% will be in the form of intermercials, which are ads that contain five to ten seconds of animation while the Web page downloads (Angwin, 1997). The United States had the highest total Web advertising market of $37 million in 1995 (Forrester Research, 1996, 1997). North America had the most Web advertising expenditure in 1995, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific (Angwin, 1997). Internet activities, including advertising, in the United States are clearly important for further considerations. The next section discusses this in greater detail.

United States

It was important to understand Internet users and their activities to better gauge Internet’s potential as an advertising tool. According to the Internet Advertising Report (IAR, 1997), there were 51 million adult Internet users in the United States, defined as those age 16 and above, by the end of June 1997. This number of people was already double of the number of total Internet users in 1995 worldwide.

By June 1997, about 8.6 million adults, or 17% of the online population claimed they were making purchases online, with a median monthly expenditure of $50 (Nua Ltd., 1997a). This translated to an annual $5.1 billion online commerce market. The online commerce market had grown almost three times as large from 1996 to 1997 (Nua Ltd., 1997a). Stanley (1997) predicted the online commerce market would retail to more than 150 million Web users by 2000 - too significant a market segment for the advertisers to ignore.

It is predicted that the most successful online shopping services will be insurance, financial services, computer hardware/software, travel books, music/video, flowers/gifts, and automobiles (Chou, 1997). On the other hand, over two thirds of Internet users show a reluctance to pay for online purchases with credit cards. This implies a concern for security online.

Despite E-commerce security concerns, the growing popularity of the Internet and World Wide Web may be taking shares of audience away from the mass media. About 25% of Internet users said they have used less mass media such as newspapers, magazines or television as a result of spending time online (FIND/SVP, 1997). There has also been a decline in television usage as well as long distance phone calls among adult Internet users (Avon Products, 1997). In addition, an increasing number of Internet users are getting their news online instead of from television or print media. Interestingly, Internet usage growth has had the least effect on radio consumption (FIND/SVP, 1997).

According to Jupiter Communications (1997a), total U.S. Web site ad spending was estimated at $260 million in 1996. A survey released by the Internet Advertising Bureau (Nua Ltd., 1997c) revealed a 66% increase in advertising spending from the first quarter of 1997 and an 322% increase from the first half of 1996. Although the amount of Web advertising spending was growing, sixty-seven percent of the $710 million Internet ad revenues during the first half year of 1996 still came from Internet, information and computer technology businesses (Chiu, 1996a). In 1997, five industries dominated online advertising. They were consumer related advertising (30%), financial services (22%), computing products (21%), new media (7%) and telecommunications (7%) (Nua Ltd. 1997c).

Although the popularity of the Internet and the Web has had an impact on the usage of traditional media, the growth of Web advertising has not increased as rapidly (Chiu, 1997). Fifty-four percent of those who advertised on the Web in 1996 spent less than $250,000 on Web ads, 38% spent between $250,000 to $1 million, while only 8% spent more than $1 million. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed suggested that the rate of return was the key issue working against Web advertising, and 45% said it was due to the lack of standardized measurement (Interactive Daily, 1997).

Web audience measurement and effectiveness measurements of Web advertising appear to be the major roadblocks to advertising on the Web. Researchers started out by measuring the number of "hits" each site has per month (Poler, 1997). The number of hits means "the number of times a program or item of data has been accessed or matches some condition" (CMP TechWeb, 1998). However, using the number of hits was found to be an inaccurate measure because it overestimated the number of visitors (CMP TechWeb, 1998). Also this measurement cannot tell the length of time that each visitor stayed on the sites or whether they looked at the banner ads of the sites. Currently there are a number of ways to measure "visits" such as the use of "cookies" in order to trace the number of repeat visits and the duration of each visit (Poler, 1997). However, those measures still cannot accurately measure how effective each banner ad is.

A study done by Millward Brown Interactive (1997) indicated that viewers exposed to banner ads remembered what they saw, and had 5% increase in brand awareness. On the other hand, a Baruch College-Harris Poll by Business Week (Nua. Ltd., 1997b) found that of the 49% of those who clicked through the ads, 81% of them said they had no intention of buying anything online. Furthermore, the lack of a single standard rate for advertising online also contributes to advertisers’ unwillingness to advertise online. As of 1997, Web advertising remains at the beginning of the growth stage in the United States. Many of these issues which have affected the Internet growth in the U.S. were also found relevant in Taiwan. The similarities may indicate that as a global medium, the Internet follows the same development process in different countries.

Taiwan

Even though the Internet had a late start in Taiwan as compared to the United States, it has been growing at a very fast rate. There are currently three Internet Service Providers in Taiwan, the HiNet (the Telecommunication Company in Taiwan), the SeedNet (Institute Information Industry) and TANet (Ministry of Education) (Chen, 1997). The number of total users, for both business and education purposes, grew from 441,000 in June 1996 to 1,260,000 in June 1997, which was 6% of a total population of 21 million people in 1997 (Taiwan’s Internet Information & Intelligence Association, 1997). This growth tripled from 1996 to 1997. It was a substantial growth rate when compared to only 45% growth in the number of U.S. Internet users during the same time period.

Similar to the Internet users in the United States, most of the Internet users in Taiwan had read fewer newspapers and watched less television as a result of surfing the Net. A total of 61% of the users claimed they spent less time on newspaper and TV after using the Internet (Lai, 1996).

In terms of online commerce potential, 13 percent of the users in Taiwan had purchased online by August 1996 (Lai, 1996), while 17% of the U.S. online population had purchased online by June 1997 (Nua Ltd., 1997a). The average spending of Taiwanese shoppers was comparable to the median monthly expenditure of $50 on online purchase by the U.S. Internet shoppers (Nua Ltd., 1997a).

Although more than 83% of the Internet shopping companies in Taiwan had an average of $3,450 in sales each month in 1997, more than half of them were losing money (Chou, 1997). In addition, more than 70% of the online shopping providers were showing only 1% of their Web site visitors ever made any purchase on that site (Chou, 1997).

Those who have purchased online in Taiwan indicated that the reasons for their purchases were: curiosity, could not find the items anywhere else, time saving, convenience, and promotional discounts. The most often purchased items online in Taiwan were computer hardware/software, books, records/CD, followed by gifts/flowers (Lai, 1996), similar to the most purchased items online in the U.S (Chou, 1997).

Although there were more than 3,000 Web sites in Taiwan as of January 1997, they were mostly limited to company and product information, not for online banner advertising activities (Chiu, 1997). Figures on the amount of Web advertising spending in Taiwan were not available. Only a limited number of organizations provided Web advertising services in Taiwan (Chiu, 1996c). Similar to the U.S., the lack of standard effectiveness measurement of online advertising made most companies and advertisers reluctant to shift their advertising expenditure from the traditional media to the Internet (Chiu, 1997).

Likewise, the lack of single standard rate for Internet advertising in Taiwan is also an obstacle. Unlike the Internet advertising providers in the United States who used the advertisement location and number of visits of each banner as their basis for pricing, most Web publishers in Taiwan used the popularity of the Web site as the basis for the banner ad pricing arbitrarily. This rate did not coincide with the exact number of visits (Chiu, 1996b). These parallel issues concerning the Internet growth and Web advertising in the United States and Taiwan led to the following research questions.


Research Questions

The Internet provides a unique and important opportunity for international advertising research. Being the first truly global medium, the Internet reaches people from many countries around the world, and provides them with information, entertainment and advertising. However, very little research has addressed the natural comparison of the Internet among countries from different regions of the world. This research was a pioneering attempt to fill this gap in the literature. The United States was chosen as a reference point because of its technology leadership, whereas Taiwan was chosen because it is among the technologically more advanced countries in Asia.

A content analysis was chosen as an effective method to examine the similarities and differences between the coverage of new media technology in the Advertising Age magazines from the United States and Taiwan. Five research questions were developed to guide the content analysis study.
1. What was the overall coverage of the new
media technology in each country?
2. What were the most frequently discussed topics
in the articles from each country?
3. What were the most frequently discussed
sub-topics in each of the topic areas from each
country and what are the implications?
4. Specifically, within the sub-categories, what
were the most discussed online advertising issues
in each country and what are the implications?
5. What were the possible reasons for differences
or similarities between the extent and type of the
Advertising Age coverage of new media technology
in the two countries?


The Study

Seventeen issues of the U.S. weekly Advertising Age magazines were randomly selected to match with the same number of issues of the monthly Chinese Advertising Age from January 1996 to June 1997. The February and March issues of the Chinese Advertising Age were published together. Advertising Age in Taiwan can be translated as Advertising Magazine in Chinese. It is published by the Rock Publication Company and was a licensee of Advertising Age for about four years until it dropped the contract at the end of 1996. Both magazines were considered the major advertising publications in the two countries.

There were a total of 152 Internet related articles from both countries included as the sample of the study. An Internet related article was defined as any article that had either Internet or Web specific words in its headline or at least two paragraphs in its text containing information related to the Internet. Letters to the editors, forums, viewpoints from people, agency and account news were not included in this study.

A code sheet and detailed coding scheme were developed to record the content of the articles. The code sheet was divided into four main sections including country of origin, publication date, title and the article’s focus. The article focus was further divided into categories of regions mentioned, senders, mediators, receivers and others. The categories of senders, mediators and receivers were developed based on a traditional communication model. According to McQuail (1994), the model moves from 1) sender, where the message was originated, or this can be the events and voices in society; 2) channel, communicator role; 3) message, which plays as the mediator role between the sender and receiver; to 4) receiver, which is the audience. These four major categories were then divided into more sub-categories for the coding scheme to be exhaustive. Further details about the coding scheme are available from the authors.


Findings and Discussions

Overall Coverage

Almost 15% of the articles in the U.S. and 8.8% of the articles in the Chinese issues were determined to be Internet related articles. The month-to-month distribution of Internet related articles in the U.S. Advertising Age ranged from 10.0% to 22.0% with most of the issues containing more than 10% Internet related articles. On the other hand, the month-to-month distribution of the Internet related articles in the Chinese Advertising Age ranged from 0% to 18.2% with most of the issues containing less than 10% Internet related articles on average. While all of the U.S. issues included at least four Internet related articles, half of the Chinese issues in the sample included either none or only one Internet related article. Ninety-eight percent of the articles in the U.S. Advertising Age covered domestic information. The regions covered in the Chinese issues were evenly distributed among domestic, international or both. It appears that the Internet is still a somewhat foreign-based phenomenon in Taiwan. Comparatively, a lot more Internet activities are developing in the domestic U.S. market.

Frequently Discussed Topics and Sub-Topics

As the most discussed category in the U.S. Advertising Age, "senders" accounted for 68.1% of the Internet related articles in the sample. Articles that included senders’ information in the U.S. Advertising Age were about twice as many as those in the Chinese Advertising Age. There was a significant difference between the two countries (c2 = 10.93, p< 0.05, df = 1). The topics mentioned were not necessarily mutually exclusive because several topics could be included in one article. Table 1 is a summary of the findings from senders’ category. The "all articles" section represents the percentage of articles that included the senders’ category among all of the 152 articles in the sample. The "U.S." section shows the percentage of articles that included the senders’ category among all of the 119 articles in the U.S. issues. The "Taiwan" section shows the percentage of articles that included the senders’ category among all of the 33 articles in the Chinese issues.
____________________________________________________

Table 1
Summary of Findings in Senders’ Category

All Articles U.S.A. Taiwan
Variables (n=152) (%) (n=119) (%) (n=33) (%)

Senders 93 (61.2) 81 (68.1) 12 (36.4)
Agency Activities 11 (7.2) 7 (5.9) 4 (12.1)
- online advertising 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
Advertiser Activities 5 (3.3) 5 (4.2) 0 -.-
- online advertising 2 (1.3) 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
Media Research 1 (0.7) 1 (0.8) 0 -.-
- online advertising 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
Internet Providers 63 (41.4) 57 (47.9) 6 (18.2)
- online advertising 5 (3.3) 5 (4.2) 0 -.-
Reports of People 5 (3.3) 5 (4.2) 0 -.-
Reports of Events 3 (2.0) 1 (0.8) 2 (6.1)
- trade shows 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
- conferences 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
- courses 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
- sponsorship 2 (1.3) 1 (0.8) 1 (3.0)
Management Companies 6 (3.9) 6 (5.0) 0 -.-
____________________________________________________

The most popular sub-topic among senders’ activities in both sets of the magazine was Internet service providers or publishers’ activities. The number of U.S. articles with such information was more than twice the amount of Chinese articles that included such information. Table 2 shows the breakdown of Internet service providers/publishers by product categories. Most of the Internet service providers or publishers mentioned in the U.S. articles were in the computer technology industry. This implies that the Internet publishers were dominated by computer technology businesses. As the Internet develops in the future, it is possible that the Internet publishers would become more diverse and include other industries, such as sports and leisure, books and banking (Table 2).

Ninety-seven percent of the articles discussed other activities of the Internet providers were from the U.S. articles. Table 3 reports other activities of Internet service providers, including business strategic alliances/partnerships, new site launches, marketing strategies, new services set ups, sponsorships and competition. However, online advertising activities were not being discussed extensively within this category. The online advertising topics covered were mainly online advertising expenditures, outside Web advertising management companies, online management strategies, and online advertising techniques. It could be that online advertising was still at its introductory stage in the United States.
____________________________________________________

Table 2
Internet Service Providers/Publishers’
Product Categories

U.S.A. Chinese
Variables (n = 119) (%) (n = 33) (%)

No Internet provider activities 77 (64.7) 29 (87.9)
Banking/Investments 3 (2.5) 0 -.-
Insurance/Credit cards 2 (1.7) 0 -.
Books/Records/CD 6 (5.0) 1 (3.0)
Stereo, Telephones & TV 1 (0.8) 2 (6.1)
Computer Technology 17 (14.3) 0 -.-
Sports & Leisure 7 (5.9) 0 -.-
Telephone Company 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
Men & Women’s Apparel 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
Cable TV Channel 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
Multi-product Companies 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
Total 119 (100.0) 33 (100.0)
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Table 3
Other Activities Covered
in the Internet Providers’ Activities

U.S.A. Chinese
Variables (n = 119) (%) (n = 33) (%)

No other activities 69 (58.0) 28 (84.8)
Business strategic alliance 10 (8.4) 0 -.-
Profit gains/loss 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
New site launches 16 (13.0) 4 (12.1)
Legal lawsuits 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
Marketing strategies 7 (5.9) 1 (3.0)
New content set ups 1 (0.8) 0 -.-
New services set up 6 (5.0) 0 -.-
Sponsorships 4 (3.0) 0 -.-
Competition 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
____________________________________________________

A higher percentage of the Chinese articles focused on discussing mediators’ information. There is a significant difference between the two countries (c2 = 14.04, p< 0.05, df = 1). Table 4 is a summary of findings of mediators’ category. Topics found to be most frequently discussed in Taiwan, included online advertising, marketing strategies, and overall Internet characteristics. The implication was that media coverage was still focusing on exploring information on the Internet in Taiwan, as opposed to developing Internet business standards in the United States.

Finally, the receivers’ category was the least discussed topic among all of the sample articles. There was a higher percentage of the Chinese (6.1%) than the U.S. articles (1.7%) which included information from the receivers and the Internet users. All of the articles discussed user information, such as demographics, average time online and browsing habits. Table 5 is a summary of the receivers’ category findings.
Specific Coverage of On-line Advertising

Only two articles, among a total of 119, from the U.S. Advertising Age covered topics of online advertising in senders’ category. They were about advertising expenditures and management strategies online. Online advertising issues were the most frequently discussed topics in the mediators’ category. The percentage of the Chinese articles (33.3%) that discussed online advertising were more than three times as much as the percentage of the U.S. articles (11.8%) that included such information. It is important to note that the Chinese articles which discussed online advertising employed mainly information outside of Taiwan.
____________________________________________________

Table 4
Summary of Findings in Mediators’ Category
Variables

All Articles U.S.A. Taiwan
Variables (n=152) (%) (n=119) (%) (n=33) (%)

Mediators 67 (44.1) 43 (36.1) 24 (72.1)
New Technology 14 (9.3) 11 (9.2) 3 (9.1)
Political Issues 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
- elections 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
Legal Issues 10 (6.6) 8 (6.7) 2 (6.1)
- privacy laws 4 (2.6) 4 (3.4) 0 -.-
- copyright laws 2 (1.3) 1 (0.8) 1 (3.0)
- citations
- regulations 5 (3.3) 4 (3.4) 1 (3.0)
Online Advertising 25 (16.4) 14 (11.8) 11 (33.3)
Marketing Strategies 19 (12.5) 8 (6.7) 11 (33.3)
Sponsorship 1 (0.7) 1 (0.8) 0 -.-
Internet Effectiveness 1 (0.7) 1 (0.8) 0 -.-
Overall Characteristics 6 (3.9) 0 -.- 6 (18.2)
____________________________________________________

Table 5
Summary of Findings in the Receivers’ Category

All Articles U.S.A. Taiwan
Variables (n=152) (%) (n=119) (%) (n=33) (%)

Receivers 4 (2.6) 2 (1.7) 2 (6.1)
User Information 4 (2.6) 2 (1.7) 2 (6.1)
- media usage/trade off 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
- usage purpose 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
- demographic 2 (1.3) 0 -.- 2 (6.1)
- ag 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
- gender 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
- income 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
- education 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
- career 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
- geographic 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
- Internet growth rate 1 (0.7) 0 -.- 1 (3.0)
- average time online 2 (1.3) 0 -.- 2 (6.1)
- browsing habits 2 (1.3) 2 (1.7) 0 -.-
Most Visited Sites 0 -.- 0 -.- 0 -.-
____________________________________________________

Online advertising rates, expenditures, revenues, problems/limitations, techniques of measuring its effectiveness, and techniques of advertising online were the most popular topics discussed in Advertising Age from both countries. Table 6 shows the total number of times that each online advertising topic appeared in the mediators’ section in both U.S. and Chinese Advertising Age. The most discussed online advertising topics in the U.S issues were techniques of advertising online, ad expenditures, ad revenues, standardization and techniques of measuring effectiveness. Similarly, the most discussed online advertising topics in Chinese issues were techniques of measuring and improving effectiveness, ad rates and problems and limitations. Issues involving online advertising effectiveness are, perhaps, of universal concern.
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Table 6
Number of Times Online Advertising Topics
Covered in Mediators’ Category

U.S. Chinese
Variables Edition Edition

Ad rates 1 5
Ad expenditures 3 2
Ad revenues 3 2
Cost 0 2
Growth Rate 0 2
Effectiveness 1 1
Problems/limitations 1 3
Management strategies 1 1
Standardization 3 0
Techniques of advertising online 4 2
Techniques of measuring effectiveness 3 6
Ways to improve measuring effectiveness 0 5
Top online advertisers 0 1
Total 20 32
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Similarities and Differences

It appeared that most of the articles in the U.S. Advertising Age discussed senders with emphasis on Internet providers’ activities, whereas articles in Chinese Advertising Age mostly fell under mediators’ category with emphasis on online advertising issues. A possible reason for the U.S. Advertising Age to cover more senders’ information and the Chinese Advertising Age to cover more mediators’ information can be explained via the product life cycle analogy. The Internet was probably at the introduction stage of its product life cycle in Taiwan, whereas the Internet development in the United States could be at the beginning of its growth stage.

Since the Internet was at the beginning stage of its development in Taiwan, there was a lower percentage of Internet related articles in the Chinese Advertising Age compared to the United States. While all of the issues in the U.S. Advertising Age included at least four Internet related articles, some of the Chinese issues didn’t even include a single Internet related article. In addition, since the Internet has developed further in the United States, many of the articles in the U.S. Advertising Age were able to talk about activities in the domestic scene. In contrast, most of the articles in the Chinese Advertising Age could only cover information on other countries, mainly about the United States. Therefore, unlike those U.S. articles that focused on the senders’ category that originated Internet activities, the Chinese articles focused more on mediators’ category that gave descriptive information of the Internet technology.

Although the development of the Internet was at different stages of its life cycle in the two countries, Taiwan appeared to be following the same path as the United States. For example, most of the articles in the senders’ category focused on the Internet service providers’ online activities and most of the activities were related to new services and new sites launched in both countries.

Unlike the development of the Internet, it appears that Internet advertising was still relatively new in both countries. The limited discussion and attention paid to online advertising activities in the U.S. Advertising Age indicated that Web advertising was not yet a major phenomenon in the United States. However, among the U.S. articles that covered online advertising, majority of the information was about industry activities such as ad expenditures, ad revenues, ad rates and techniques of advertising online. Obviously, advertisers and Internet publishers have begun to pay attention to the opportunities of advertising online during the time of this investigation. It is likely that online advertising in the United States would soon enjoy significant share of growth.

On the other hand, although online advertising topics in the Chinese Advertising Age had three times as much coverage as the U.S. issues, none of the Chinese articles covered agency, advertiser, or Internet providers’ advertising activities. Instead, the online advertising coverage in the Chinese articles were about the mediators which included only Web advertising related information from foreign countries, not actual industry activities in Taiwan. In other words, there was not as much online advertising activity mentioned in Chinese issues compared to the U.S. issues. The limited online advertising activity coverage indicated that the advertising industry in Taiwan had not yet begun to explore the opportunities of Internet advertising. This further confirms that Internet advertising still has a long way to go in Taiwan.

Most of the articles that included online advertising coverage in both countries included topics of ad revenues, ad expenditures, different techniques of advertising online and how to improve its effectiveness measurement. Therefore, when it comes to online advertising issues, there were not many differences between the two countries. It also shows that one of the major obstacles that hindered the growth of online advertising in both countries could be the lack of effective measurement.


Summary

A content analysis of Advertising Age articles in Taiwan and the U.S. was carried out. Findings from the study indicated that although the United States was ahead of Taiwan in terms of the new media technology, the trend and growth of the Internet and its use for advertising in Taiwan could be following a similar path as the United States.

The study reported here is the first attempt at establishing a baseline understanding of the Internet and its advertising potential in Taiwan and the United States. This appears to be a useful tool to find out how the advertising industry is moving alongside new technologies. Future studies in this area would require further improvements. Research should extend over a longer period of time in order to observe the trend and growth of Internet and online advertising coverage in both countries better. In addition, the longer time frame would allow the study to have a larger sample size.

Although this study is limited to one specific magazine, other Internet or computer technology related magazines and newspapers could also be used to understand and compare the Internet and online advertising coverage worldwide. Furthermore, additional research such as content analysis of similar types of Web sites or of banner ads on the Web sites from countries around the world can be incorporated to assist further understanding of online advertising development in different countries.

Overall, the development of the Internet seems to be following a very similar development process in Taiwan and the United States. This research provides a foundation for further research in this area of rich opportunities. Will the Internet develop similarly in other countries? Can these similarities result in collaboration between countries? Could the Internet become an international medium that helps nations to communicate?


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Chiang received her M.A. in Advertising at The University of Texas at Ausitn, where Martin is a doctoral student in Advertising and Lee is associate professor of Advertising.