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Internet now 'mass medium'
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March 31, 1998: 2:42 p.m. ET
AOL head sees increasing brand awareness, acceptance of new media
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The Internet has become accepted as a mass medium and America Online Inc. can capitalize on its growth so long as the online service provider continues its focus on the software rather than access services, President Robert Pittman said Tuesday.
"I really think that 1997 was the breakout year for the Internet," Pittman said during the opening presentation at the "Big Picture" media conference hosted by Schroder & Co. and Variety magazine. "We're getting into the ballpark of the true mass medium."
AOL, based in Dulles, Va., considers the Internet market to be subdivided into approximately 28 million business users and 43 million consumer users. As for the home market, AOL contends it has roughly half of that audience, thanks in large part to high brand awareness. AOL has a 44 percent unaided brand awareness, far outpacing its closest competitors, Pittman said.
"To me, when you have unaided brand awareness above 30 percent, you have a mass market brand," Pittman said.
Pittman's enthusiasm was echoed by other industry officials at the conference. "This year we've chosen to highlight it [new media] because AOL has as many subscribers as the biggest cable companies in the country. They have 13.5 million subscribers, which rivals Time Warner and TCI," said Ivan Lustig, investment banker with Schroder.
In August of 1996, the typical AOL user logged on to the service an average 13.6 minutes a day. By February 1998, the daily usage rate was up to 46.2 minutes, Pittman said.
The attention that new media have received hasn't gone unnoticed among long-time industry officials. "New media is just an evolution of the business of media. You participate in things that change. This is part of that changing process that inevitably happens in all businesses," said Bob Wright, president of NBC. 
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