eMarketer looks at some of the factors advertisers should consider when targeting consumers in Western Europe.

An understanding of how Western European internet users spend their time online will obviously help marketers better pinpoint how to allocate their internet ad spending budgets.

However, just because email is the most popular activity among Western Europe online consumers, according to data from Forrester Research, this does not mean that email marketing should be a primary method for marketing to them.

Just as in the United States, the dual dangers of spam and privacy violations mean that email advertising must walk the fine line between permission and relevance in order to remain viable.

Travel advertisers would appear to be well-positioned for online advertising in the EU-5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) since researching holidays and preparing trips online are the second- and third-most-popular activities. For example, a mixed use of search (to encourage visits to websites) and rich media and video (to make vacation venues vivid) would work well here.

Western European consumers are much like their American counterparts, with the three main activities that have migrated to the internet from traditional means being booking tickets (at 41 percent of respondents), reading newspapers (at 35 percent) and shopping (at 34 percent).

As quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 15, 2005, Fiona McDonnell, senior analyst, Forrester Research (Amsterdam), noted, "The Coca-Colas of the world are doing what they call branded entertainment. They know that entertainment goes down better with people than advertising."

Where can marketers find consumers? Email, news, local information and travel rank highest among all respondents to the Millward Brown/EIAA survey. Music sites are more visited by the younger internet users than respondents as a whole.