e-commerce and Internet advertising enjoys massive boom

Auction sites, most notably Allegro.pl, have led the way in the rapid growth of e-commerce, with zl. 2.5 billion worth of products changing hands on Allegro alone last year, a 65% increase on 2005. The number of people buying on-line rose to 3.3 million. Meanwhile, the share of the Internet in advertising spending rose from 2.7% to 3.9%, and internet ad spending is expected to reach zl.335 million this year, a rate of growth faster than in any other country in the region. "Advertisers will increasingly divert their ad spending from TV to the Internet," says Michal Marczak, analyst at DI BRE Bank. These trends have been facilitated by the growth in the number of Internet users. The number of broadband connections rose by 170% last year, to 2.2 million, spurred by greater competition and falling charges. (Puls Biznesu, p. 10) R.M.