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October 2003
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Marketers: Ads, Agencies Decline in ImportanceA closely-watched annual agency-client survey - to be released later today - will show a continuing downward spiral of faith in advertising and ad agencies. Many of the measures of client-agency faith, goodwill and trust are at near-record lows. Most... continue reading »Amazon's Impact on Niches: Fear and OpportunityThe New York Times takes a closer look at the sporting goods industry as a means of detecting the "Amazon effect," the business impact that occurs when the e-tail giant decides to enter into a new niche, scattering competition, but... continue reading »Regardless of Purchase Origin, Cruise Decision Made OnlineWith five out of six cruise purchasers finding and considering their trip options online, sites have sprung up to help buyers through this process. This illustrates an increasing trend with high-ticket and high-consideration purchases, where the decisive information and feedback... continue reading »Group that Cowed Search Engines Targets TVFirst, there was the lawsuit that forced search engines to stop intermingling paid listings with the real search results. Now, the same Ralph Nader-backed group, Commercial Alert, is leveling its legal guns at television, making a very similar case. AdWeek... continue reading »Getting Behind the Scenes at DoubleYou, Nike's Online ShopMarketingWonk's Martina Zavagno interviewed the creator of Nike's new online advergame that is based on their extremely popular "Tag" TV commercial. Through Spanish agency DoubleYou, "Tag" has become an interactive game on Nikeplay.com, a web site that also allows... continue reading »Coke using GPS to locate prize winnersCoke plans to use GPS to locate contest winners. Indystar.com reports. Tom Hespos comments.... continue reading »AOL Launches Hispanic Online ServiceAOL has launched AOL Latino, a new service developed specifically for the Hispanic audience. MediaPost reports. Steve Hall posts.... continue reading »Watts Wacker 'Futures' MarketingRoy Young interviews prominent marketing theorist and pundit Watts Wacker. The conversation careens through the state of marketing today and its status among other company departments, to Count Basie, Dilbert and untruths told by Krispy Kreme managers in the South.... continue reading »'Shoehorning' Can Help Site Rankings"Shoehorning" in search engine optimization circles is the practice of cramming a desired search term into the actual content of a site. It can be fairly effective in helping out search engine rankings, but there are some subtleties to doing... continue reading »Overture's European Country Portals ExpandOverture launches in Austria and Switzerland, a natural expansion, increasing the velocity with which the search competition is heating up in the smaller developed countries. Kevin Lee reports on a press release.... continue reading »New Study Says Taglines Are UselessMarketers spend billions of dollars every year developing and advertising taglines hoping consumers will remember them, understand them and act on them. That may soon change. According to a recent study by Emergence, most of that money is wasted with... continue reading »Looksmart Joins P4P FrayLooksmart is joining the auction based paid placement marketplace with a new paid placement product. The paid listings will be shown on Looksmart as well as syndicated on several partner sites. Previously, Looksmart paid placement sponsored listings were non-auction listings... continue reading »Pundit: Google May Be BrokenJim Hedger, a search engine optimizer (SEO) and industry writer, feels that Google's pagerank algorithm is losing its edge, as spammers and pushy SEOs manipulate results. The article mentions Kaltix and some other relevancy boosting technology. However, all this discussion... continue reading »4As Pushing FTC to Bust NielsenThe American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) filed a confidential inquiry with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to instigate an investigation into alleged anti-competitive behavior of Nielsen Media Research. Members of the 4As have chafed over a three to five... continue reading »Leo Burnett President LeavesBob Brennan, president of Leo Burnett and a one-time key member of the small, subversive Interactive Marketing Group that first sparked the ad giant's forays into online media, stepped down in what has become a fairly regular management turnover for... continue reading »FCC asks DMA to Hand Over its own Whipping SwitchIn a move reminiscent of a father asking the son to "go outside and find me a switch," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has asked the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) for a copy of the National Do-Not-Call Registry so that... continue reading »Coke's Kruse Speaks of Online Promotions, TeensiMedia interviews Carol Kruse, Coca-Cola's group director for interactive marketing. The beverage company has been using online media especially for extending and increasing the interactivity of promotions. Coke has shown particular success in attracting teens online. iMedia reports.... continue reading »iMedia Timeline Gives Basic Industry OverviewiMedia started offering a significant event news timeline, starting in Q2 2002. The archive can be sliced by date or by topic. It contains about five to eight items per month. Tig Tillinghast reports.... continue reading »Telemundo to Help Yahoo Get Personal with HispanicsContinuing the trend of large sites and portals trying to break into the burgeoning Hispanic market, Yahoo announced today that it will partner with Telemundo to move its personals listings into the Latin American community. CNET reports.... continue reading »Yahoo Settles Bad Faith Telemarketing ClaimsYahoo settled claims against it that it violated its own privacy policy when it started exploiting telephone numbers of users who previously were led to believe that information would not be distributed. The case reveals a weakness in the armor... continue reading »CA Law Sows Doubt Throughout Permission List IndustryEmail direct marketers are wringing their hands now that a new California state law seems to make it difficult or impossible to create or sell lists - at least until it gets overturned by a court. The legislation's author said,... continue reading »Yahoo's Small Biz Portal Sells Even Rivals' ServicesYahoo is pushing its small business marketing efforts by creating a marketing portal with many online services, including paid inclusion ad placements with rival web sites. Taking a more neutral approach, Yahoo hopes to become the interface through which small... continue reading »Zentropy Trims LA OfficeZentropy downsized its Los Angeles staff about 15 percent. Its other seven offices were unaffected. AdWeek reports.... continue reading »Northwest Airlines Launches E-Services CampaignTo combat the drought of business air travelers, Northwest Airlines has launched a new ad campaign to promote its new planes, new terminal and a new reservation system. Star Tribune reports. Steve Hall posts.... continue reading »InterActiveCorp Doing a Google Dance?CitySearch may have been ahead of its time. Back when it launched, the challenge of amassing local advertisers efficiently drove CitySearch and Microsoft Sidewalk to the brink of ruin. Now with Google's ability to target ads topically and locally may... continue reading »Stop Pops: A Guide to Pop-up KillersPopUpCop, iHatePopups, PopSubtract, PopNot, Popup Dummy...the names say it all. This article offers a brief review of some of the leading software for putting the power in users' hands to control these often annoying ads. NewsFactor reports. Rick Bruner posts.... continue reading »MarketingWonk Monthly IntroducedMarketingWonk introduced this morning a new monthly version of its news and commentary. The PDF document contains specially-prepared summaries from the unblinking eye of the MarketingWonk news desk, allowing executives to quickly come up to speed on the month's developments.... continue reading »Edison Research Concludes Internet Multimedia Users Prefer Ads to Paying for ContentFifty million Americans used online video and/or audio in July, and a survey of 2,000 of them found that they prefer a TV-like ad-supported model over paying for content. That was just one of the conclusions of recently released research... continue reading »These4Walls Launches World's First Viral Marketing RaceThe format of the competition, dreamed up by These4Walls and sponsored by Lycos, is a race, where the winner will be the person/company who drives the most traffic to their own allocated domain over a period of 6 weeks using... continue reading »Idiot Marketers Drawing Ire of Populist PoliticosInternet.com editor Rebecca Lieb points out that marketers - or at least the caricatures of a real marketer, as portrayed by cunny-thumbed trade groups like the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) - are quickly becoming juicy targets for populist politicians. Now... continue reading »Optimizing the Landing PagesIn his third part of the three-part series on holiday search marketing, Kevin Lee, explores learnings on optimizing the landing page designed to judo search listing clickers into buyers. ClickZ reports.... continue reading »AOL's Plans for Blacks Still Pretty VanillaWhen AOL's Lisa Brown said that the huge Internet service provider was going to launch a separate service for blacks, it appears she was mistaken. Hopes had risen that online advertisers would finally be able to segment within the black... continue reading »Rich Use Web More, Best Place to Find ThemThe more time a person spends online, the more likely they are to be affluent. In a new study looking at affluence and media usage, comScore Media Metrix found that users with household incomes of more than $100,000 spent about... continue reading »E-Economy Now Huge Factor, Still Growing QuicklyOnline spending continued its voracious growth rate, growing by about a quarter to about $37 billion in the first nine months of 2003. Where in years past, this growth rate multiplied against a small starting figure didn't have a great... continue reading »Optimizing KeywordsBryan Eisenberg, CEO of Future Now, posted a primer on using keywords and maximizing their response rates relative to sales. ClickZ reports.... continue reading »More CXOs Use Web for Key InfoAbout two out of five senior business executives say that the Internet is the most important source for their business information and news. The new study by Forbes and GartnerG2 found that roughly half of respondents said that they were... continue reading »Volvo's 'Winning Drive' Campaign A SuccessVolvo's campaign to promote its new XC90 SUV has garnered data on 33,000 potential buyers. Business 2.0 reports. Steve Hall posts.... continue reading »Frederick's of Hollywood Hires 411webNaughty lingerie purveyor, Frederick's of Hollywood, has hired 411web to manage online marketing efforts. AdWeek reports. Steve Hall posts.... continue reading »Shop.org Trade Show ReduxAnne Holland reports from last week's Shop.org show that multi-channel marketing is still a huge operational challenge for most retailers. One speaker had to bribe her IT guys to get her analytics project done. Moral of the story: multi-channel operations... continue reading »Tommy Hilfiger to Launch First Kid Focused CampaignIn this first kid-focused ad campaign, designer Tommy Hilfiger has teamed with Nick.com and Omnicom's Organic to develop a three month online campaign to promote its footwear to kids 6-12. AdWeek reports. Steve Hall posts.... continue reading »VeriSign Caves to ICAAN DemandsVeriSign has confirmed it will shut down its Site Finder service in response to requests from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Internet Advertising Report reports. Steve Hall posts.... continue reading »U.K Tailor Lutwyche Bespoke Launches Racy Viral VideoU.K. based tailor Lutwyche Bespoke has launched a viral video that will soon be turned into a television spot. Revolution reports. Steve Hall posts.... continue reading »Search Engine Psychic Fortells Yahoo ActionsGerard Manning at Searchengineposition thinks he has discerned a pattern in Yahoo decisions and announcements. Parsing Yahoo's past timing relative to earnings announcements, Manning predicts that Yahoo will make some dramatic changes on Tuesday October 14th. Changes might include the... continue reading »Google Broadens the Broad MatchThe Internet Advertising Report writes on Google's upcoming changes in the AdWords algorithm to broaden matching options. The Google email sent to account holders is a pre-announcement stating the changes will "...expand the scope of broad matching and offer you... continue reading »Reporters, Privacy Advocates, Off the Mark on GoogleThe sometimes luddite New York Times printed another piece generating a privacy hysteria regarding an innocuous Google practice. The search engine is tracking repeat usage with a cookie (Lock up the kids! Bar the doors!). The NY Times itself is... continue reading »Distressed Polaroid to Distressed HavasDistressed ad agency holding company Havas won the even-more-distressed "$50 million" account of Polaroid. The camera maker came out of bankruptcy a little more than a year ago and proved to be one of the few clients Leo Burnett has... continue reading »DMA to FCC: Drop DeadThe Direct Marketing Association has opted not to help in the strangling one of the most annoying of its own constituencies by granting the Federal Communications Commission a copy of the Do-Not-Call Registry.... continue reading »In-Flight Craziness Gets Ad Exec HandcuffedFurther confirming widespread belief in the mental instability of advertising professionals, one British ad executive found himself handcuffed to his airline seat after trying to kick out one of the plane's windows. Showing that a good account guy never blames... continue reading »Industry Leaders Debate Phylogeny of DMersThe head of the large and truculant American Postal Workers Union called large direct mail companies "vermin" in a letter sent to a reform commission that was reprinted in the union's newsletter. Large direct mailers objected to the use of... continue reading » |