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December 2003
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Pop-ups, on Way Out, Won't Be MissedThe Online Journalism Review's Mark Glaser writes that pop-ups are likely to suffer a permanent demise, based on the simultaneous blows given by Microsoft's impending pop-up blocking browser release and the growing realization among web publishers that pop-ups may provide... continue reading »Google Threatened for Keyword PoliciesAlways-On reports that Jan Mackenzie, called a search-engine expert and president of The National SE-club, claims to be preparing a class action suit against Google for having denied its AdWords customers the use of trademarked and untrademarked keywords. Mackenzie reportedly... continue reading »Wait, So Does Can-Spam Mean More or Less Spam?The naysayers were bound to come forward en masse, and this article focuses solely on those who say the Can-Spam act will actually lead to more spam. So who's to gain? Spam filter sellers are salivating. Critics of the bill... continue reading »Hollywood Gets MobileWith hyper sales of cheap, color screen phones and an infrastructure that can support content downloads, the mobile entertainment business is growing beyond ringtones, song clips, and simple games. Traditional media and entertainment companies are looking at wireless as the... continue reading »Email and Voicemail Working TogetherThinmail has brought a new twist to email and may change the face of email marketing by combining email with voicemail. Paul Gilster, a writer for the Raleigh News & Observer, describes this technology and some potential workforce management uses,... continue reading »Finalists Named in AOL Interactive ReviewAOL narrowed its choice of agencies down to three in the ongoing review for the online service's interactive advertising duties. Left standing in the ring, after an initial 15, to fight for the $50-60 million account are three finalists: Modem... continue reading »Email ID an Attempt to Save Email MarketingAs methods to insure the identity of an email sender become more sophisticated, spammers may find themselves out of work. This week, Yahoo and IronPort systems have announced proposals for technical specifications that would enable email recipients to verify the... continue reading »VA Arrests One of Top 10 Alleged SpammersThe Virginia Attorney General, now that it's proven a populist cause, made his first indictment against two spammers using Virginia's relatively strong anti-spam law. Jeremy Jaynes was arrested in North Carolina and is expected to be extradited north. Richard Rutowski,... continue reading »AOL on Ropes, Failing to Jump Back into RingAs online billings increase, AOL has been unable to turn its sinking ad sales operations around. CNET canvassed the industry to find that AOL still suffers from serious staff, inventory, contractual, cultural and strategic shortcomings. CNET reports.... continue reading »FTC Pressuring Commerce Sites on Data SecurityThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is telling e-commerce sites that they must secure the financial data of their customers or risk enforcement actions. In related news, PetCo disclosed that it is under investigation for exposing 500,000 credit card numbers through... continue reading »DoubleClick CEO Sees Steady Ad GrowthSpeaking at the CSFB Media and Telecom conference in New York yesterday, DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan told attendees to expect steady growth in online advertising rather than a quick return to the explosive growth experience in 1999 and 2000. AdWeek... continue reading »McCann's Coen Sees 15 Percent Online Ad GrowthThe guru of online ad research, Universal McCann's Bob Coen, is doubtless the most widely cited source on ad spending across sectors. He does tend to underestimate the online sector (for example, he bases his direct mail estimates flatly on... continue reading »Offline Sales Key Factor in Setting Search BidsKevin Lee points out that one of the key pieces of data in determining how much a click is worth to a search engine advertiser is how many offline sales will result. As this is often difficult and sometimes impossible... continue reading »Wireless Gaming Growing QuicklyWireless gaming is ready to hit the masses, but there's still a lot to be done to consolidate the industry. IDC and Strategy Analytics report. Martina Zavagno comments.... continue reading »Text Messaging Gains Ad ConvertsBig advertisers are looking to spend money on mobile phone text messaging advertising. Coke and P&G are both testing programs right now, and Forrester Research - going a fair distance out on a limb - predicts that the industry will... continue reading »Radio Demos Start Eroding in Face of Online PickupRadio stations and networks are losing young listeners, reports Research Director Inc., posing a threat to long-term listenership prospects and indicating that, like network television, the medium may be experiencing a rut in programming at just the wrong time. The... continue reading »Retailers Extend Breadth OnlineSome merchants are extending their selection beyond what's available in stores through a variety of online tools from, simple e-commerce to clickable catalogs and on-demand software CD burning. Some of these strategies lead to a reliance on partnerships and outsourcing... continue reading »Daimler-Chrysler Awards Account to Incumbent, OrganicDaimler-Chrysler decided to keep their incumbent agency Organic, despite a long, arduous review in which it had to beat out sibling agency Critical Mass. Client spending rocketed back up this year, with Daimler-Chrysler spending at a rate of about $15... continue reading »Study: Customer Service Emails StinkThe Nielsen Norman Group found that many, if not most, companies send customer service and transaction confirmation messages so clumsily that they get ignored by recipients, many of whom mistake them for spam messages. Customer service programs often use obscure... continue reading »Overstock Drops Claria CaseWhen Overstock.com told Claria (then Gator Corporation) to stop showing alternative offers to members of Clairia's ad network, Claria told the Internet retailer to take a long walk off a short pier. Now a judge has accepted Overstock's motion to... continue reading »Crispin Porter to Seed Internal Online Creative Capability with Goodby StealOne of the hottest creative shops hired one of the hotter online creative directors to seed development of better interactive capabilities. Crispin Porter & Bogusky hired former Goodby, Silvertsein & Partners art director Jeff Benjamin to start a group out... continue reading »Groxis Grocks Google GarbageCan a new sorting method of search results weed out the "garbage" results? For some searchers it can. A new front end sorter for search engine results, Groxis, launches officially today. The front end categorizes results for searchers, which can... continue reading »British Twins Test Online vs. Offline Xmas ShoppingA British ecommerce trade organization conducted an unscientific study, pitting two Christmas shopping twins against one another: one using the Internet and the other tippling out to High Street to do her shopping the old fashioned way. Not surprisingly, the... continue reading »Sales Promotion Budgets Eyed OnlinePromo Magazine reviewed issues in planning and creative when tying retail promotion with branding objectives. For publishers that look to promotional budgets for increasing web sales and for marketers who are thinking about using the web for promotional activities, the... continue reading »Interactive Creative Yields Better ResultsAs confirmation of what all in the online industry already know, a new report finds interactive ads do, in fact, perform better that non-interactive ads. Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms report reported all areas from brand awareness to brand favorability to purchase... continue reading »Newspapers Use Web to Explore Year of the NicheNewspapers are focusing on new products to keep growing. Targeted web content that appeals to youth and niche advertising products for retailers are proving key. This, of course, doesn't prevent print products from coming out around proven audience-getters online. It's... continue reading »DoubleClick Stock Up Following UpgradeFollowing an upgrade by brokerage firm U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, DoubleClick stock rose a bit in pre-market today. U.S. Bancorp raised DoubleClick's target price from $13 to $15 and upped its estimate for 2004 earnings from 24 cents a share... continue reading »Ad Recovery Predictions OptimisticForecasting the advertising market maybe as difficult as predicting the weather. While the major forecasters are bullish on the ad market recovery in 2004, Stefano Hatfield, columnist at the MediaGuardian, thinks we may be too optimistic.... continue reading »Online Brand Awareness Measurement Gets SpotlightRecent announcements from a Dynamic Logic partnership with Eyeblaster and a change in the way InsightExpress recruits for brand surveys have, again, brought attention to online brand measurement. ClickZ's Nate Elliot provides an overview of what can be measured, the... continue reading »Go Toast Bought by Atlas DMTThe banner ad server company Atlas DMT, an aQuantive division, bought Go Toast, the increasingly popular search term bid management and optimization tool. The price and terms were not disclosed, but Go Toast was profitable and had made about $3... continue reading »Saddam Delivers Death Knell to NewspapersPoynter Online's Steve Outing comments on how Saddam's capture early Sunday morning is another death knell for the printed newspaper and how publishers need to begin thinking of themselves as news "companies" rather than "papers." As Sunday editions were delivered... continue reading »Liquor Advertisers Party With Cable, Completely Miss TargetPerhaps liquor companies haven't heard that television viewership is declining as they are still bathing in the excitement of seeing themselves on TV. And their agencies seem to be in the same tub. Perhaps they still haven't heard of the... continue reading »Donald Duck's Mobile Efforts Get an Online HomeWalt Disney Internet Group announced the birth of Disneymobile.com, a site providing information on Disney Mobile content offerings and purchases as well as product demonstrations. The idea behind Disneymobile.com is to introduce existing customers to this new form of Disney... continue reading »Kia Mounts One of Year's of Top Three Dumbest PR EffortsPress Release: Kia Motors Wraps Successful National Campaign to Rethink How Boomers are Defined There are so many contenders for dumbest PR campaign of the year, but Kia Motors' has to be in the top three. As part of the Forever... continue reading »Media Buyers Wrong on ConsumerMediaPost conducted a study with InsightExpress that showed that media planners' perceptions of consumer media viewing preferences are out of whack with what the consumers themselves feel. After interviewing hundreds of planners and buyers, InsightExpress found that the media professionals... continue reading »Kraft Involves Moms with Halloween TreatsThis past Halloween, Mom's were treated to an information packed Unicast interstitial as they navigated through MSN. The full-page unit had a short, engaging intro followed by a full-screen image filled with alternative menus for interesting Halloween treats. Perfectly timed... continue reading »Local Search the Next Big ThingThe next logical step for search engine marketing is said to be local search. With 10 million small businesses spending $22 billion per year on advertising it's a market ripe for search engines to tap. Search engines are wisely getting... continue reading »Federal Judge Loses Mind, Allows D Squared to Serve Messenger Pop-upsIn unfortunate news today, a federal judge lapsed into allowing Messenger pop-up spammer D Squared to continue abusing Microsoft's Messenger service to deliver pop ads promoting its software that block pop-ups. If anything would justify an advertiser completely avoiding the... continue reading »Patents Impeding Online InnovationEcommerce Times takes a survey look at how intellectual property protection - often in the form of patents - is causing consternation among companies that would like to introduce new innovations to the market. Ecommerce Times reports.... continue reading »Search Engine Optimization Tactics ListedTim Richardson continued his two-part series on bettering search engine listings with search engine optimization. He adds another five tactics to his list, concentrating on cultivating relevant and numerous links on other sites. Ecommerce Times reports.... continue reading »Yahoo's PayDirect Goes InternationalWhile an article by Ecommerce Times frames Yahoo's PayDirect expansion into international money transfer as a conflict with Paypal, Olivier Travers comments that it's more directly competitive with Western Union's services.... continue reading »Advertising.com Sees December Search Conversions SkyrocketAlthough the report is intentionally vague so as to protect its participants' identities, Advertising.com released what appears to be good news. Conversion rates for paid search listings were compiled for three "major retail advertisers" during the 10 weeks leading up... continue reading »Delaware: Unflattering Picture of Ecommerce EnemyDelaware's Senator, and former governor, Tom Carper is a friend of commerce, so long as it happens off of Route 95 in New Castle County. He announced his opposition to keeping the Internet sales tax-free, worried that this will infringe... continue reading »Ultimate E-commerce Dashboard Still not OmniscientJim Sterne is the ghost of Christmas present, showing marketing managers responsible for driving traffic how miserable their existence really is. In his review of the various metrics they need to get a good picture of the sales process, he... continue reading »AOL Taps Three Online FinalistsAOL narrowed its list to four finalists for its "$55-$60 million" interactive account. ModemMedia, AtmosphereBBDO, iDeutsch and Digitas were tapped to continue in the pitch, which shouldn't be confused with the concurrent $300 million traditional media pitch now threatening incumbent... continue reading »Interview: AOL's Don Logan Reviews First YearAd Age interviews Time Warner Media and Communications Group Chairman Don Logan who claims AOL is not for sale, AOL will see growth in 2004, Time Warner plans new magazine launches and expansion in the cable market. Ad Age... continue reading »Bristol-Meyers Squibb's CMO Dixon InterviewedMarketingProf's Roy Young interviews Wendy Dixon, Bristol-Meyers Squibb's chief marketer, who may personify the wrenching trend in pharmaceuticals where companies that were once structured to speak only to doctors and distributors are now facing consumers head-on.... continue reading »PETA: Santa Can't Come this YearAs if kids don't have enough to worry about, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) updated their GoVeg site to tell them that the milk they're leaving out for Santa is making him impotent. Soy, PETA says, brings... continue reading »Consumers Have Positive Attitude on Product PlacementTwo recent studies are shedding light on consumer's perceptions of product placement. The first, from Mediaedge:cia's MediaLab, found 60 percent of those who saw a product placement would be willing to try the product. Young demos don't mind product placements... continue reading » |