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February 2004
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Sirkin Made Burnett's Top Account DirectorLeo Burnett appointed Clive Sirkin to head its global accounts as the agency's only group managing director. Sirkin quickly earned a reputation fifteen years ago, soon after starting at Burnett, as a brilliant and bored account executive. Not satisfied with... continue reading »Exec Pleads Guilty for Overbilling at OgilvyThe former director of broadcast Ogilvy, Peter Chrisanthopoulos, pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to AdWeek. The charges stemmed from allegations of padding time sheets and asking another employee to do the same on Ogilvy's Office... continue reading »Tattooed Buttocks Used to Promote Travel SiteU.K. travel site Lastminute.com launched Lovetattoo.com, where users customize a tattoo on the derriere of a man or woman, presumably to send to a loved one for Valentine's Day. All in the name of promoting travel. Steve Hall reports.... continue reading »UPS Tepid on Web MarketingiMedia interviewed Robert Manning, director of interactive communications at UPS, showing the company believes online marketing is for business to consumer companies, not b-to-b firms like Manning's. UPS is concentrating on bringing more of its business services online and making... continue reading »Can-Spam Begets List Suppression ServicesList suppression services are only now starting to pop up, providing the necessary technology for email marketers to come into compliance with the Can-Spam Act. Companies like the List Services Corporation can help make sure lists remain free from those... continue reading »Online Video Ads Alive AgainA new rash of online video ad formats is leading to much experimenting by marketers. Microsoft sold the experimental format to Discover Card, Gateway and Revlon, among others. Meanwhile, Unicast touts Vonage's Internet telephony services to businesses. B-to-B Online reports.... continue reading »Rich Media Mitigating Responsiveness PlungeDoubleClick reports that two out of five ads it served were rich media ads, up about 60 percent from the year before. Where ad clickthrough rates plummeted to 0.43 percent across normal ads, rich media ad response rates plummeted to... continue reading »XML Paid Inclusion to Become Still More ImportantWith the upcoming integration of Inktomi into Yahoo results, XML paid inclusion is going to prove critical to many web marketers. Those with good Google organic rankings will find half of their traffic gone. Inktomi is, in many ways, more... continue reading »Profits Missing, Unnoticed in front of Shiny Social Networking BaublesA New York Times reporter had trouble digging up a real business model behind the fabulous new fad of social networking. Jupiter's Nate Elliott noted his eerie feeling of deja vu: "I'm having a real problem finding a business model... continue reading »Snapple Works Hard, Interacts to Keep Soul in BrandA MarketingSherpa piece shows how Snapple works hard to maintain its brand image of a spunky, fun company interacting directly with customers. In one promotion, it had Snapple drinkers collect bottle caps to use to purchase kitschy items in an... continue reading »Market for Marketing Directors Hots UpMarketing directors, long suffering employees often subjected to the first round of layoffs, may finally be able to look forward to a better job market. It seems more companies are hiring and more are replacing the marketing resources sacked in... continue reading »Democrats Turn to Net to Say 'Ralph Don't Run'An online movement got Clark to run, and one pumped up the Dean campaign. Democratic Party fans now hope an online movement can keep a candidate out of the 2004 U.S. Presidential race. People hoping to get President Bush out... continue reading »Necco Hearts Add "IM Me" for Valentine's Day 2004According to their site, NECCO Conversation Hearts, not chocolates, are the number one selling Valentine's Day candy. The company will make eight billion hearts for 2004, the first year you can buy ones that say "IM Me." Want to... continue reading »Star Flackers Tell Ad Age Jackson Boob Stunt Was GreatJust when you thought you heard about Janet Jackson's boob for the last time, along comes a group of New York flacks to the stars telling Ad Age that the stunt was great and that they aspire to have their... continue reading »MPAA Anti-Piracy Site ParodiedA new parody site, RespectBootlegger.org, is fighting against the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA's) site, RespectCopyrights.org. The parody tells parents how to educate their kids downloading bootleg films and pokes fun at MPAA's attempt to show blue collar set... continue reading »Baseball Demands Huge Web Broadcast FeesMajor League Baseball (MLB) pointed its bat to the bleachers, taunting media partners with its intent to knock rebroadcasting right rates clear out of the stadium. RealNetworks, its existing partner, already dropped out, blanching at the costs. While most television... continue reading »eBay Off Hook for Feedback RatingsA court let eBay continue to ignore annoying user requests to remove contentious items of customer feedback stored in user profiles. The ruling may help eBay maintain a more truthful and rational ecosystem of mutual customer ratings, the figures that... continue reading »Firebird, né Phoenix, né Mozilla, Now 'Firefox'The Mozilla Foundation, the scattered open source browser development effort, changed the name of its flagship browser yet again. The first change to "Phoenix" (from "Mozilla") was short-lived when it proved to have been already trademarked. Up until this week... continue reading »Reebok VP InterviewediMedia scored an interview with Reebok's VP of global marketing, the man responsible for memorable web promotions such as "Terry Tate, office linebacker." Micky Pant explains how Reebok chose the Internet as the medium it could use to exploit brilliant... continue reading »FindWhat Right on Espotting Accounting, Still PurchasesFindWhat.com planned on purchasing Espotting, a British search firm, but balked when it became unsure about the validity of Espotting's accounting. Indeed, an audit found that instead of making money, the firm was bleeding about a million dollars a month.... continue reading »Chart to Track Ringtones PopularityThe Mobile Entertainment Forum announced it will launch the first official ringtone chart, which will be compiled by KPMG. Mobile music is becoming more and more prevalent, and the ringtone chart is surely a strong sign of an industry gaining... continue reading »AOL to Sell Report on Its Own Email FailuresAOL, long the subject of email marketer tirades for perniciously dumping permission emails to its users, will now test waters with marketers to see if they'd be willing to pay for a report indicating why their emails are getting deep-sixed.... continue reading »MarketingProfs Adds Subscription LevelMarketingProfs introduced a premium content level today, offering seminars, additional newsletter content and access to a questions-and-answers community. The highly popular marketing trade rag has been experimenting recently with different types of content offerings, serving both academic and professional audiences.... continue reading »UCLA Study: Internet Stealing 6 Viewing Hours a Week from TVOf the 12 hours per week the average user spends on the Internet, about half of that is stolen directly from television watching, according to a study soon to be released by UCLA. For the first time since measurement began,... continue reading »U.K. Lad Mag Sites Not Hot EnoughThere seems to be a lack of hotness quotient on the U.K lad magazine websites. That has to be the explanation for IPC, Emap and Dennis, publishers of Loaded, FHM and Maxim respectively all planning site revamps at the same... continue reading »Pointcast LivesNo, the Pointcast brand isn't making a return (yet), but many other companies are moving into the desktop advertising space formerly referred to as push advertising. Google launched its Deskbar that allows users to search directly from the Windows taskbar.... continue reading »Google Supporting ChineseGoogle's refit its AdWords interface to fully support Chinese. Marketers can enter traditional Chinese text into the system in their own Chinese language interface, outputting double-byte characters. They'll also have the choice of 15 other languages. Search is going global.... continue reading »One in Thirty Emails Can-Spam CompliantOnly three percent of spam received by MX Logic, a mail filtering company, complies with the new Can-Spam Act provisions, such as including an unsubscribe link and a valid postal address. And the act didn't seem to have any effect... continue reading »Measuring Offline Effects of Online Efforts Yet to Take OffThe Seattle Times, a hometown paper to aQuantive, published a piece indicating that new developments in web-to-bricks-and-mortar measurement are kicking online marketing up a notch. aQuantive division Avenue A released a new tracking technology a few months ago that marries... continue reading »Email Marketers Undecided on Email Postage SchemeWhile there has been some carping, the email marketing industry reacted with caution so far to the idea that by charging postage for each email, opt-in emails and legitimate commercial messages would surface once more in the sea of spam... continue reading »DaimlerChrysler Online Chief InterviewediMedia interviewed DaimlerChrysler's Bonita Stewart, its head of interactive communications. Bonita works within the traditional manufacturer-dealer structure, where the customer relationship is jealously guarded by the dealers, limiting the potential power of some direct online marketing efforts. Online spending is... continue reading »Big Marketers Continue Shift to Internet MarketingAttendees at this week's iMedia Conference listened to large marketers explain why they shifted more marketing dollars to online initiatives. DaimlerChrysler Director of Interactive Marketing Bonita Stewart said the car manufacturer increased its online spending by 30 percent this year,... continue reading »NetConversions Gobbled up by Hungry aQuantiveaQuantive announced yet another online advertising technology acquisition today, revealing its $4.5 million to $7 million purchase of NetConversions, a company geared to helping online retailers sell more goods to more people. Just two months ago, aQuantive announced its acquisition... continue reading »Copyright Office to Make Webcasters Pay for Stuff Radio Airs for FreeThe recording industry and the U.S. government, along with the complicity of several large online portals who have since moved away from online broadcasting business models, have come to an agreement that charges web music broadcasters fees for every song... continue reading »U.K. Pumping More Quid into Online than RadioThe Interactive Advertising Bureau's U.K. division released a study showing that online spending in the island commonwealth more than doubled, surpassing the market for traditional radio expenditures. Online marketers spent almost $150 million in Britain in the second quarter of... continue reading »Candidate Drop-outs May Fork Over Email ListsWith Wesley Clark and other Democratic Presidential candidates dropping like flies, the question arises: what are they going to do with their lists of supporters email addresses? Former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi warns against the release of Dean's list... continue reading »Conversion Rates Key to Successful Ecommerce SiteSteve Jackson, writing in Conversion Chronicles, offers insightful information of how to improve website conversion rates. Everything is covered from design and verbiage to when and how to make changes. Jackson likens web retail design to the same discipline in... continue reading »Restaurateurs Use Site Contest to Name New NYC EateryA couple of restaurateurs in the East Village of New York City have extended until February 23 their online contest for the public to name their new restaurant. The winning submission will be awarded a cash prize of $2,500. The... continue reading »Local Search Now a Quarter of Online Commercial ActivityMulti-channel marketers not meeting the needs of local searchers are missing about 25 percent of the total audience. That means sites should have store locators, and perhaps the ability to check inventory levels at a store level. Some retailers... continue reading »'BuddyLinks' Scheme Infecting IM UsersIn a scheme only a contract lawyer could love, a new program sends itself to all the IM buddies on a victim's computer, posing itself as a game that needs to be installed (and permissions given to do so). Once... continue reading »MSN Kills Pop-up Offerings in U.K.MSN continued its roll-out of its policy to stop pop-up offerings on its MSN service. Having stopped the continued sale of pop-ups in the U.S. last year, they will now be banned in the U.K. and through much of Northern... continue reading »Consumer Sites' Data Collection Makes for B-to-B CompetitionDave Morgan, CEO of Tacoda, pointed out that the new trend among consumer sites to collect industry information from readers makes the business-to-consumer sites big competition for the business-to-business crowd. Where previously, B-to-B sites were the only game in town... continue reading »Publicis Shows Organic Growth AgainPublicis, the very large, French ad agency holding company announced Q4 financial results that may indicate the ad slump for the big players may be winding down. Organic growth in billings within its network remained positive at a two percent... continue reading »Search Growth Rates Lower Due to Industry Size, Maybe Price StabilizationA newly released eMarketer report predicts a slowing in spending on paid search. It would have been hard to top growth rates of last year, especially as the search industry is now so large. It also might be a harbinger... continue reading »Terry Tate Pulls Reebok Visitors without Need for Super Bowl SpotDuring last year's Super Bowl, the Reebok Terry Tate commercial generated 20 million online views of the extended version of the spot and built a database of one million who opted into "Terry's Hit Squad." This year, Reebok did not... continue reading »Lycos Ditching Search Focus, Ad SalesIn what might be the largest Internet company about-face in the industry's short history, Lycos will regear its site to join the faddish and crowded social networking space, shedding its search engine focus. Not content to merely change its focus... continue reading »Lamb Hoof Agency Promo Gets Mixed ReactionAsk Wapling of Adland recounts the story of a Swedish ad agency, Cole, Russel & Pryce, which dreamt up the idea to send a real lambs foot to its clients and prospects promoting the agency and its new website. The... continue reading »Google Bans Critical AdA non-profit group paid search keyword campaign was pulled down by Google for being critical of another advertiser. The Oceana group, critical of cruise ship companies that typically fail to properly treat sewage before dumping it into the sea, did... continue reading »Pirillo Launches 'Gnomedex,' 3-Day Open Bar in TahoeBeloved uber-geek Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame sent an email that says simply: "Three-day open bar in Lake Tahoe. ;) Hope to see you there this year!" The site elaborates: "Pre-register just $99." Hmmm, living in New York and being... continue reading » |