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Jupiter Research Reports Online Holiday Spending To Increase 21% In 2003, To $17 Billion

(New York, NY - November 6, 2003) — Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), today announced that it forecasts that online holiday retail sales will be $17 billion, a 21% increase over online consumer spending in 2002. Despite the fact that 46% of consumers stated they will shop more than four weeks before the holiday, Jupiter Research expects the convenience of online purchasing, the primary reason consumers shop online, to push purchasers to the very edge of the buying season. In 2003, books and apparel top consumers’ gift lists, and the toy category has overtaken the purchase of music.

Based on an October 2003 consumer survey fielded by Jupiter Research, Jupiter Research’s new report "Holiday 2003: Online Pushes Limits of Last Minute Shopping" found that close to 40% of online users plan to do some or all of their holiday shopping online, an increase of 18% over last year. Overall, consumers are more confident in spending in the online channel; fewer consumers cited fear of credit card security this versus last year (36% vs. 47%, respectively). Half of consumers say they can find the products they are looking for online more easily than in stores and they believe they can obtain hard-to-locate products online far easier than in stores. Jupiter Research attributes these shifts in consumer attitude, and the 21% surge in holiday spending this year, to the influx of new buyers using the online channel.

Jupiter Research’s Holiday 2003 Executive Survey shows that retailers have taken measures to improve their fulfillment and customer service capabilities this year, and to ensure they are ready for the last minute rush. Forty one percent of online retailers surveyed will offer extended cut-off dates in order to encourage last minute purchases. Just over half of the retailers surveyed by Jupiter Research will also rely on new seasonal staff to accommodate the increased demand. According to Patti Freeman Evans, Retail Analyst at Jupiter Research, "Given the short selling season and the highest projected online holiday sales volume ever, online retailers stand to gain or lose a great deal by anticipating consumers’ last minute shopping needs." Because consumers’ primary concerns about buying gifts online center on shipping and delivery, retailers who fulfill orders on time, even very late in the buying season, stand to garner high loyalty points with holiday shoppers.

The complete findings of this report are immediately available to Jupiter Research clients online. For more information on the report or Jupiter Research’s Retail research service, please contact Kieran Kelly at researchsales@jupitermedia.com or call 1-800-481-1212.

About Jupitermedia Corporation

Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), (www.jupitermedia.com) headquartered in Darien, CT, is a leading provider of global real-time news, information, research and media resources for information technology, Internet industry and graphics professionals. Jupitermedia includes the internet.com, EarthWeb.com, DevX.com and ArtToday.com Networks which include over 165 Web sites and nearly 200 e-mail newsletters that generate over 275 million page views monthly. Jupitermedia also includes Jupiter Research, a leading international research advisory organization specializing in business and technology market research in 18 business areas and 14 vertical markets. In addition, Jupiter Events produces offline conferences and trade shows focused on IT and business-specific topics, including Wi-Fi Planet, Search Engine Strategies and Enterprise IT Week at Computer Digital Expo.

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Netcraft Analysis Revolutionizes Hosting Industry Market Research

BATH, England – Netcraft announced today that its Hosting Provider Switching Analysis, launched in June, is now licensed by hosting companies who provide the infrastructure for over 14% of the active web sites on the Internet.

Using Netcraft’s switching analysis, a hosting company can identify where new customers were previously hosted, where customers it has lost have moved to, and inspect the same information for any of the world’s top 1500 hosting companies.

"We see Netcraft’s switching analysis as a key indicator of customer satisfaction," says Robert Marsh, EV1Servers’ founder and CEO. "We’ve found it to be an invaluable tool for monitoring our performance relative to other hosting providers. By providing a quantitative measurement of our quality of service, Netcraft’s data has helped keeps us on our toes."

Within a few months of launch the analysis has been licensed by many of the leading companies in the hosting industry as a way of tracking their own progress, identifying both weak and dangerous competitors, gauging the impact of competitive upgrade offers, and researching their entry into new markets.

"1&1 Internet is the world’s biggest web host and a crucial aspect of our growth is to constantly improve and evolve our products and services”, says Andreas Gauger, CEO of 1&1 Internet AG. “Netcraft’s Switching Analysis has been of great value to us. Netcraft keeps an unerring eye on the market and provides us with reliable figures. The Hosting Provider Switching Analysis helps any observer to identify the web host that cares most for its customers."

The hosting industry continues to be extremely competitive with early venture funded leaders losing ground to a new wave of organically grown hosting providers funded by customer revenues. Timely and accurate data on the movements of sites between hosting providers is critical to hosting companies, their suppliers and investors.

"Netcraft represents a real revolution in market research. Firms like Gartner can tell you what they think people are going to do. Netcraft can tell you what people are actually doing." said Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Associates.

The dataset covers hosting providers worldwide and monitors movements of web sites in all gTLD and ccTLD domains. Netcraft continually explores the internet finding new sites and queries each to determine the web server, operating system, and hosting location. Netcraft currently has over 45 million web sites in its database, and compares the hosting location of each site month by month to track market changes in the hosting industry.

About Netcraft

Netcraft is an Internet services company based in Bath, England. It has explored the Internet since 1995 and is a respected authority on the market share of web servers, operating systems, hosting providers, ISPs, encrypted transactions, electronic commerce, scripting languages and content technologies on the internet.
Netcraft has a cosmopolitan client list spread through the UK, the USA, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

For more information, visit http://www.netcraft.com or contact Mike Prettejohn, +44 1225 447500, info@netcraft.com.

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