Brace yourself: from July 20, Netscape will be spending $10m marketing a redesigned and expanded Netcenter 2.0. Print and broadcast advertising are planned to complement sponsorships from Sony, Paramount, Entertainment Tonight, Warner Brothers and Hollywood. Each of those sites will display Netscape banner ads, and most are taking part in the Netscape Silver Screen Sweepstakes by providing prizes for the online game. The huge investment and the involvement of heavyweight old media players are some gauge of the sudden and tremendous business interest in web portals, startup pages which provide internet users with search and email capabilities. Yahoo! Inc is presently the market leader, enjoying high share prices and profits as a result (CI No 3,448), but Netscape has declared its aim to steal the lead by 2000. With almost half the world’s web browsers defaulting to Netscape’s home page, the company already has a significant advantage.
