Detailed Analysis

Disclaimer: Before you ask, yes I do realize how sad it is that I had the time to do this. It was the combination of a long boring commute, a voice recorder and a little bit of free time at work…

April 12, 2001

The Results 143 ads total 65 high tech companies (45%) 57 traditional businesses (40%) 21 media companies (15%) Well, the high tech boom is over and the bubble has burst. This has has a dramatic effect on who is advertising in the Bay Area The most obvious outcome of this is the precipitous fall in the amount of dot-com advertising, while still significant it commands far fewer ads than it did before The Financial Services, Misc/Retail and TV/Radio companies stepped up to the plate to fill the void left by the dot coms For the first time we are seeing blank/unsold billboards This batch is characterized by a lot more companies with more then 1 billboard. Apple just barely held on to its most common advertiser position with CalFed and IBM close behind There are quite a few more ads than previous times. This is in part because I have started included ads on the electronic boards, plus a few boards that were not exactly on the highway but still visible I tweaked some of the categories that no longer make sense. Got rid of ‘Travel’ and added ‘Retail’. The retail ads have previously been listed in the misc section Detailed Analysis (full data)

June 26, 2000

The Results 121 ads total 74 high tech companies (61%) 35 traditional businesses (29%) 12 media companies (10%) The overall numbers of ads remained roughly the same from last month. The traditional companies picked up a little ground at the expense of the media companies. Apple again wins the most frequent advertiser with 6 ads Detailed Analysis (full data)

May 20, 2000

The Results 111 ads total 67 high tech companies (60%) 29 traditional businesses (26%) 15 media companies (14%) As expected, Silicon Valley’s business makeup (as derived from the amount of ads) is heavily weighted to tech companies, with dot-coms dominating the pack The dot-coms edged out the traditional and the media businesses combined 5 were ads for traditional companies advertising their online properties Apple wins the most frequent advertiser with 4 ads and there was a 4 way tie for second place with 3 ads between Forbes.com, Nissan, ETrade and WebEx. Detailed Analysis (full data)