Portals
An Internet portalis a web site that acts as a gateway to information and services avail-
able on the Internet. Essentially, it is an alternative term for online intermediary, but the
main emphasis is on providing access to information on the portal site and other sites.
Portals are important to Internet marketers since portals are where users spend the
bulk of their time online when they are not on merchant or brand sites. Situation analy-
sis involves assessing which portals target customers with different demographics and
psychographics use. It also relates to competitor benchmarking, since the sponsorship
deals and co-branding arrangements set up by competitors should also be reviewed.
For marketers to extend the visibility or reach of their company online, they need to
be well represented on a range of portals through using sponsorships, online adverts and
search marketing, as explained in Chapter 8. Portals also enable targeted communica-
tions. Specialist portals enable markets to target a particular audience through
advertising, sponsorship and PR while general portals often have sections or ‘channels’
which indicate a particular product interest. For example, financial services provider
Alliance and Leicester uses a Loan calculator to sponsor the Money, Loans channel on
ISP portal Wanadoo (www.wanadoo.com.uk) and web measurement company NetIQ
sponsors the relevant channel on ClickZ (www.clickz.com) to reach their target audi-
ences. Main portals such as newspapers and trade magazines also have registration, so
can provide options for delivering messages via e-mail also.Many portals are related to Internet service providers – ISPs such as AOL
(www.aol.com) and Wanadoo (www.wandadoo.com) have created a portal as the default
home page for their users. The Microsoft Network (www.msn.com) is a popular portal
since when users install the Internet Explorer browser it will be set up so that the home
page is a Microsoft page.Types of portals
Portals vary in scope and in the services they offer, so naturally terms have evolved to
describe the different types of portals. It is useful, in particular, for marketers to under-
stand these terms since they act as a checklist that companies are represented on the
different types of portals. Table 2.8 shows different types of portals. It is apparent that
there is overlap between the different types of portal. Yahoo! for instance, is a horizontal
portal since it offers a range of services, but it has also been developed as a geographical
portal for different countries and, in the USA, even for different cities. Many vertical and
marketplace portals such as Chemdex and many Vertical Net sites (now VertMarkets
(www.vertmarkets.com)) which were created at the height of the dot-com boom proved
unsustainable and have largely been replaced by online versions of trader magazines for
these markets.INTERMEDIARIESPortal
A web site that acts as
a gateway to
information and
services available on
the Internet by
providing search
engines, directories
and other services such
as personalised news
or free e-mail.
Activity 2.7 Which are the top portals?
To see the most important portals in your region, visit Nielsen//NetRatings
(www.netratings.com) and choose ‘Top Rankings’. This gives the top 10 most
popular sites in the countries listed. You will see that the largest portals such as
MSN and Google can be used to reach over 50% of the Internet audience in a country.
The pattern of top sites is different in each country, so international marketers need to ensure
they are equally visible in different countries.
visit the
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