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March 2004
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Yet Another Study Confirms 2003 Ad GrowthNielsen/Netratings and DoubleClick added their voices to the long line of research reports looking at last year's ad spending. The study reports a doubling in rich media ads, which accounted for 17 percent of all ads placed in 2003. Total... continue reading »How to Measure Offline SalesDerek Hewitt wrote a fairly comprehensive review of usable tactics for determining how much offline sales are being generated by online efforts. He touched on surveys, coupons, registrations, panel data and rebates, among other things. iMedia reports.... continue reading »Diesel Launches Provocative 'Eden' CampaignPerhaps as an unintentional tie-in to the new FOX "Eden" reality series, ever-controversial jean maker Diesel just launched a new online campaign featuring sexy male and female models draping themselves invitingly over tree branches in a Garden of Eden. Aside... continue reading »U.K. Company Blames U.S. for Most SpamA U.K. spam filtering company released a report indicating that a majority of spam comes from the U.S. It pegged the U.S. as responsible for originating 57 percent of all unwanted business email, far ahead of #2 Canada (7 percent)... continue reading »Quigo Gets VC Support in Challenging Search MarketNew contextual search company Quigo announced it received $5 million in venture funding in preparation for its April launch. The company will come out with a system that analyzes pages to determine the best use of keywords, titles and descriptions... continue reading »DVR Use High Among Satellite SubscribersNielsen Media Research has estimated that overall usage of DVR technology is about 3.5 percent of U.S. TV households. However, new research by Ipsos-Insight claims that the figure is 5.8 percent, and a whopping 11.4 percent among satellite subscribers. The... continue reading »Newspapers Go Free Online, Gain Circ, Ad RevenuesMany newspapers are throwing subscriptions to the wind, asking instead for information from readers so that they can sell more and better-targeted advertising. Online circulation figures are exploding as a result, sometimes eclipsing the print versions of city papers. Wired... continue reading »Rural Residents Behind in Net AccessA Pew Internet & American Life study shows that as Internet use spreads, rural areas are being left behind. In 2003, barely more than half of rural residents reported having Internet access, compared with two thirds of city dwellers. In... continue reading »E*Trade's Adspend Recovers to Bubble LevelsBack when most online businesses were profligate spenders on network television, E*Trade ran an ad on the Super Bowl that stated, "Well, we just wasted $2 million bucks." That was in 2000, when the online brokerage spent $140 million on... continue reading »Free of Google, Yahoo Opts for Paid InclusionA month after dumping Google as the engine for its listings, Yahoo announced it would let advertisers pay for being guaranteed a position in its directory and search listings. Google always eschewed the practice, deeming it slightly deceptive and counter... continue reading »CheckM8 Launches Ad ServerRich media firm CheckM8 is about to launch an ad server to compete with DoubleClick and 24/7. Many rich media firms were forced to create their own ad servers early on, lacking serving support from an oligarchy of commonly used... continue reading »Wireless Group to Spend $100MM, Starts ReviewThe Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association reportedly plans to spend about $100 million in media. It initiated a review among four agencies to pick up the account, including Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, BBDO, McCann-Erickson and Ogilvy & Mather. Judging from... continue reading »In-Store Pickup Spawns Other SalesRetailer REI reports that many of the customers who elect to buy online and pick up merchandise at the store also purchase unplanned items once they make it to the bricks and mortar facility. REI reports that about a third... continue reading »Domain Name Market Getting Heady AgainDomain names are again selling for six figures, indicating much optimism among those willing to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a catchy web address. One tracker of domain names said that the average domain resale price is... continue reading »Study: Internet Important to Purchase DecisionThe recent DoubleClick Touchpoints survey shows the Internet to be a key element in the purchase decision process in seven out of ten product categories. While television plays a strong role building initial awareness for categories such as movies, personal... continue reading »Yahoo to Include Audio, Video in ResultsYahoo will expand its search and directory results to include elements of richer media found on the web, including audio and video. Its plan calls for letting non-profits submit rich content for free and for other media producers to pay... continue reading »Study: Half of Users Produce Online ContentA recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found 44 percent of Internet users produce online content in one form or another. The most common form of content are photos, followed by music, sites, newsgroup content, online... continue reading »Virgin Mobile Viral Ad Promotes 'Phone Accident'Seeded and tracked by DMC, Virgin Mobile's campaign spoof ad, called "Scorching Girls," was created by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R. In the ad, an unsuspecting victim is gaffer-taped to a car in a scrapyard. At a nod from a tough-looking... continue reading »comScore Adds Local Search Monitoring to qSearch ToolInternet research firm comScore added a local search component to its qSearch product that reports on changing search use patterns among 25 monitored search engines. comScore determines whether a search is "local" by keying off of added search terms, such... continue reading »ANA Lobbies Against Food Ad RegulationThe Association of National Advertisers (ANA) testified before Congress today that it acts as a "cop on the beat" of self-regulation, helping reign in child obesity. Pointing to the Ad Council, it spoke of upcoming efforts to address parental control... continue reading »Keynote Offers Vision of Search 'Concept Packages'Search engine expert Danny Sullivan told the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York City that the market remains too volatile to expect a winner to come out of the search engine battles between Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. He complained... continue reading »Seven of Ten Search Buyers to Increase SpendJupiter reports that seven out of ten search marketers intend to increase their budgets this year. It also found that about half now purchase more than 100 keywords, up from about a third of search marketers last year. ClickZ reports.... continue reading »AdBusters Online Sneaker Effort Turns FarceThe silly idea AdBusters had to make its own brand of sneakers - out-cooling the big, heartless corporations - officially became farce yesterday. The anti-commercial group found to its chagrin that Asian shoe factory managers had been lying, and that... continue reading »Tobaccowala Plays Priest to Consumer GodsStarcom IP and SMG Next President Rishad Tobaccowala, speaking at Doubleclick's annual Insight Conference, said consumers are becoming more and more empowered in their control over media and that "humans are gods" because this power allows them to be all-powerful... continue reading »Lots of Bloggers, But Too Few for PewGotta love CNN's spin: "Very few bloggers on Net." The report in question, from Pew Research, concludes that two percent of U.S. Internet users kept online journals last year, but it goes on to say that more recent research from... continue reading »24/7 Joins Search Management Tool ClubNot to be left out, 24/7 said it would release a search marketing management tool similar to that of Did-it.com's Maestro, DoubleClick's newly-announced offering and GoToast, recently acquired by aQuantive. The product, called Insight SE, will analyize campaigns running across... continue reading »Rich Media Execs InterviewedSeana Mulcahy interviewed some rich media firm executives to ask them what works, what doesn't, and why is only one in six online ads using rich media today. iMedia reports.... continue reading »DoubleClick Buys SmartPath, Adds Marketing Management FeaturesDoubleClick said it would buy SmartPath, a cross-media marketing campaign management tool firm. The firm's main client is Leo Burnett, the huge agency that recently announced it would standardize on DoubleClick's serving applications. The purchase indicates either a far-reaching integration... continue reading »ATA to Take Do-Not-Call Registry to Supreme CourtStuck with a law that actually works, the American Teleservices Association will try to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the legality of the Do-Not-Call Registry. "If we win, it will not be popular," ATA executive director Tim... continue reading »Coke Follows Kids to the MallCoke, realizing it is getting more and more difficult to reach teens through traditional media, created the Coke Red Lounge, a clubish environment offering music, videos and movies. The destination is being quickly adopted by mall going teens as the... continue reading »Search Future Explored, ImaginedThis ClickZ general report from the trenches at the SES show "Future of Search" panel forgot the most entertaining part. As usual, Craig Silverstein Director of Technology at Google used highly entertaining examples of how search might morph in the... continue reading »Paid Inclusion, Community not CompatibleXML Paid Inclusion and XML fed site data apparently don't mix at Ask Jeeves (Teoma), perhaps because the community-based linking doesn't show up in dynamically generated content. At the SES conference Paul Gardi, SVP of operations and strategic planning at... continue reading »Nielsen to Measure DVR Usage in 2005Nielsen will add DVR usage to its program ratings in 2005, one year earlier than planned. The ratings service, which provides ratings that help programmers determine advertising rates, will count any program as viewed in a DVR household if it... continue reading »DMA About Faces on Do-Not-Call ChallengeMere hours after announcing its intention to legally challenge the FTC's Do Not Call Registry to the Supreme Court, the Direct Marketing Association turned tail and spilt for the hills, leaving the American Teleservices Association to go it alone. The... continue reading »New Bill Would Ban Email Trading with Kids' AddressesA bill newly introduced to Congress would prevent list brokers - traditional and email - from trafficking in the addresses of children under the age of 16 without explicit opt-in permission from their parents. The bill is sponsored by Ron... continue reading »Search Engines Race for CustomizationSearch executives at a trade conference yesterday spoke of search engine customization and personalization as a key priority for their development efforts, in their ongoing fight for marketshare. Yahoo's Tim Cadogan told the Search Engine Strategies crowd that each point... continue reading »Joe Cappo InterviewediMedia interviewed ad guru Joe Cappo, discussing with great detail and insight why the ad agency industry's manic gyrations of consolidation and brand extension aren't solving its real problems. Specifically, the structure lends itself to the use of one marketing... continue reading »Lexus Moves Budgets Toward OnlineJim Meskauskas reveals in great detail the motivations behind the Lexus move to apportion ad budgets from TV to the web, showing how 70 to 80 percent of the luxury car buying audience uses the web to help make purchase... continue reading »Law Hopes to Improve Patent ProcessIn an effort to improve the seemingly random process of awarding patents - especially in view of some doozies seen in the Internet space - the U.S. House of Representatives voted through a bill that would allow the patent office... continue reading »Ask Jeeves Buys Interactive Search HoldingsAsk Jeeves is buying Interactive Search Holdings, the company that owns iWon and Excite for a reported $343 million. The purchase would more than double the traffic footprint of Ask Jeeves, which had about 680 million searches on its site... continue reading »Can-Spam Targets Marketers TooLegal experts warn that the recently passed Can-Spam Act targets marketers as much as spammers, recognizing that catching the emailers is much harder than punishing the source of their revenues - typically marketers who turn a blind eye to the... continue reading »Search Spammers' Bots Linking Garbage across WebMike Grehan points to the challenge in fighting search engine optimization spam, even in the most inappropriate places. The search spammers write robotic scripts that search out guestbooks and blog comment pages, then automatically spew out garbage copy with links... continue reading »Ask's Great Deal on Acquisition Gives it CloutNot only did the Ask Jeeves purchase of Interactive Search Holdings (ISH) double its search marketshare, but it also put Ask Jeeves in a more powerful position in negotiating its expiring contract with Google. Investors had worried that the small... continue reading »Standard T's & C's No Longer StandardNow that the legal weasels have had enough time to digest the 2.0 version of the industry's standard terms and conditions language used in advertising contracts, they've developed multiple exceptions and riders to interrupt what was, at first, turning out... continue reading »Clients Demanding Pop-up MediaTessa Wegert notes that the lag in advertising client sophistication means that many marketers are just now demanding that their agencies start buying pop-up media. Of course, over the last year buyers have found that the increased clickthrough rates seen... continue reading »Amazon Starts RSS FeedsAmazon, following Yahoo and others, announced it would publish syndicated feeds of product information using the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) format. The online retailer will let users subscribe to top-ten lists of products in hundreds of categories. IAR reports.... continue reading »Third of Sites to Invest in MeasurementWhile about a third of sites plan on investing in measurement resources for their sites in the coming year, only about a quarter plan on hiring people who know what to do with the information, according to a new Jupiter... continue reading »Unicast TV Recycler Format SpreadingUnicast's "rich" media format, where it allows TV advertisers to recycle creative meant for the tube, continues to find acceptance among major online publishers. CondeNet joined the club, along with biggies like ABCNews, About, MSN and Tribune Interactive. AdWeek reports.... continue reading »Utah to Ban 'Spyware'The Utah legislature passed a law that would make what it considers "spyware" illegal. While that law awaits the governor's signature, Iowa and California are also considering similar measures. The Utah measure was a response to a complaint by a... continue reading » |