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April 2004
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Conversion Improvement an Iterative, Experimental ArtSteve Jackson wrote a piece on the importance of understanding exactly what users are doing once they hit a marketer's site. Ultimately, a real knowledge of how people are interacting with content and options is absolutely necessary to practice the... continue reading »Habeas; Form Validated; Spammers WritheOddly, it worked - at least this time. When spam prevention company Habeas said it would prevent unwanted email by licensing the use of a copyrighted poem (a short, ancient Asian form known as the haiku) in users' email, many... continue reading »Gmail Potential Start of Desktop PlayDanny Sullivan's behemoth of choice - Google - just may become a "desktop paradigm," as evidenced by its foray into email with its new Gmail service. As Sun abdicates the Anti-Microsoft mantle with its recent multi-billion-dollar settlement, Google may be... continue reading »Conversion Rate Top Variable for MarketersOf all the metrics a site can produce, marketers look to conversion rates as the most important factor. Six out of ten described it as of prime importance. (The average reported conversion rate was an optimistic three to four percent.)... continue reading »Advertising.com to Cash in, Sell IPOAdvertising.com filed for a $100 million initial public offering. The inventory reseller that markets online ad media to marketers on a cost per click or action basis said the newly raised moneys would be put toward a general business fund.... continue reading »Gmail May Violate TrademarkGoogle's new Gmail service ran into trouble yet again when it finally noticed - now almost a week into their beta period - that a British firm has been using the Gmail trademark in 80 countries for several years. Interestingly... continue reading »Emailers Wring Hands over Email Content-Targeted AdsMarketers using email as a medium are now left to wonder what impact an ad-supported email service will have on their communications. While not a new issue - as both Yahoo, MSN and other free web email providers have long... continue reading »IntelliTXT CEO InterviewediMedia interviewed Doug Stevenson, CEO of Vibrant Media - the producer of the sort-of-controversial IntelliTXT ad system - to ferret out the company's perspective on claims that its technology may blur the line between ads and editorial. The system makes... continue reading »FCC Cautioned on Stifling Digital RadioConsumer groups complained to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that the recording industry's efforts to force specific anti-piracy technologies on the nascent satellite audio broadcast business would prove stifling. While not publicly acknowledged by the recording industry for the FCC,... continue reading »Rich Media Review CompletedTessa Wegert completed her review of various rich media technologies, covering in her final installment CheckM8, Klipmart and DoubleClick, along with briefer mentions of some less well known technologies. ClickZ reports.... continue reading »Yahoo Shares Surge Following Q1 SurpriseYahoo shares jumped 10 percent late Wednesday following better than expected Q1 financials. Earnings grew from $47 million in Q1 2003 to $101 million in Q1 2004. Revenue, excluding revenues shared by distribution partners, doubled to $550 million leading Yahoo... continue reading »Nielsen to Measure Video Game Ad ExposureToday Nielsen will announce Nielsen Video Games, a service that will measure exposure to ads in video games. The ratings company will also release preliminary findings from its Total Viewing Sources report on usage of the television to play video... continue reading »AOL to Launch Online Reality SeriesFollowing in the footsteps of The Donald, AOL will launch an online reality series called "The Startup," which will follow four small business for a year. The series will be featured on AOL's small business service but available to all... continue reading »Yellow Pages Site to Charge Marketers by CallFindWhat will sell its yellow pages advertising on a per-call basis, hoping to attract many of the nation's 23 million small businesses, many of which have not yet put up a website. Partnering with Ingenio for a third quarter launch,... continue reading »RSS A Potential Ad MediumRSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a bit of technology used to deliver content from many sources to one desktop or web-based application. It allows readers to scan and read topics of their choosing - provided publishers use the alternative... continue reading »French Raid Amazon.comGendarmes raided the Amazon.com French subsidiary, searching an Orleans warehouse for illegal DVDs. Agence France Press quoted an anonymous source as saying the search was for DVDs that failed to "conform to the laws," which could mean a wide variety... continue reading »Publishers Again Facing Low Inventory IssuesZach Rogers wrote an intelligent, comprehensive review of an increasingly common "good" problem that some publishers now face: selling out their media. Having spent so many years in recovery mode, many publishers don't have the institutional experience needed to move... continue reading »How-to Guide to the Email Delivery RFPEveryone knows that getting messages delivered - whether they be newsletters, commercial messages or even personal emails - is getting harder and harder, with many spam filters showing more exuberance than intelligence. Al DiGuido offers a guide to the... continue reading »Marketers Explore Net's Word-of-Mouth OptionsTell-a-friend links are becoming more and more popular, as sites take advantage of off-the-shelf programs they can easily implement and marketers come to understand the additional persuasive power inherent in a word-of-mouth recommendation. Companies are also beginning to explore social... continue reading »TW to Use TV to Dress up AOLAOL announced it will subject non-AOL member Internet users to bits of Time Warner video content, something it had previously said it would keep within the gated community of the AOL online service. The hope is that providing television content... continue reading »PETA Site Integrates with Cow Pope EventsPETA, that bastion of terrible taste, certifiable insanity and incredibly creative and over-the top PR stunts, showed up yesterday at St Patrick's Cathedral with a Popemobile displaying their 10-foot statue of a cow dressed as the Pope, complete with a... continue reading »Claria to Go PublicClaria, the company formerly known as Gator, filed for an initial public offering. The company said it cleared about $35 million in profits out of about $90 million in revenue last year, making it easily one of the most profitable... continue reading »Google: We're not Afraid of the Big Bad MicrosoftNo matter how hard Microsoft huffs and puffs about its upcoming search engine technologies - the most important quality of which seems to be the fact that it will come shackled to everyone's new version of Windows - one little... continue reading »Aussies 'Invent' E-commerce, WheelAmericans can take heart that their Patent Office isn't really the most gullible group of patent examiners in the world. It comes in a close second behind Australia's office, which just granted a patent for, essentially, e-commerce. This is the... continue reading »State Tax Forms Ask for Online PurchasesOutmoded "use taxes" - long flouted taxes on goods brought back into one state from another - have been even more consistently flouted in the e-commerce world. But California and New York, along with 17 other states, hope to collect... continue reading »Online Religious Market a Large OneA new Pew study shows that about two thirds of the nation's Internet users have used the net for spiritual purposes (and we're not talking this time about geeky online marketers' "worship" of the Internet medium). About half of those... continue reading »Internal Site Search Big Marketer PriorityBryan Eisenberg reviewed the pros, cons and how-tos on web site search, the search applications that marketers provide visitors of their sites. His review covers when it's appropriate to include search, how to organize results and how to increase the... continue reading »MSN Buys Baseball Monopoly, Leaves Mac, Linux Users Behind BleachersOnline baseball broadcasters cried foul a few months ago when Microsoft moved in and bought out from under them much of Major League Baseball's exclusive broadcasting rights. Microsoft agreed to pay many times what the broadcasters had previously contracted, sums... continue reading »Lot21 Purchase in QuestionAll is not well with the 2002 buyout of interactive shop Lot21. When Carat Interactive purchased the company, the brunt of the price to be paid to the 27 common shareholders was to be based on reaching certain business targets.... continue reading »Online Moneys Go Unspent in Music LicensingCourtney Holt, an executive with music firm Interscope, is finding himself with online money to spend and no one to help him spend it. Prior to the Rolling Stones' Windows95 licensing deal, selling advertising rights to their "Start Me Up"... continue reading »Email Lists Pushed Toward Cost-Per-DeliveryEmail list brokers who went to cost-per-action deals in the past few years have mostly succumbed to the temptation to over-use those lists. As a result, they've burned out the inventory at exactly the time when cost per thousand impressions... continue reading »Google API Tapped for Presidential 'Race'Now you can race candidates based on their organic search position for any keyword. If nothing else, the site would seem to prove that there are underemployed technology workers. Then again, perhaps it's just a bit of fun. By entering... continue reading »Meskauskas: Sellers Getting CockyUnderscore Marketing Chief Strategic Officer Jim Meskauskas says his biggest frustration is the lack of standardization among publishers when it comes to creative units. That said, he's a fan of the various forms of rich media and uses it for... continue reading »Claria Filing Reveals DetailsClaria's recent filing for a roughly $150 million IPO forced the closely held company to reveal certain financial details for the first time. It showed that a couple clients provided a large proportion of company revenues in 2002 and 2003.... continue reading »Mitsubishi to Move $260MM Budget Off TVMitsubishi executives say they are in the planning stages for a major media mix change, maintaining their $260 million budget, but moving radically away from network television to fund online and other less traditional automotive efforts. The company said quite... continue reading »Most Catalogs Now OnlineA new study shows that the number off print catalogs adding online extensions grew by 60 percent last year. That means that, for the first time, a majority of print catalogs can be found online. About 5,500 online catalogs can... continue reading »AOL Turns Around Ad Operation, Wins PraiseOn February 1, Time Inc. vet Michael Kelly took over management of the troubled AOL sales operation, replacing Lisa Brown. Kelly restructured the previously scattered sales operation into one group that now handles all non-subscription revenue, making it far easier... continue reading »BK Spreads Viral ChickenBurger King launched an artificial intelligence viral campaign, publishing the Subservient Chicken site, where visitors can command the guy-in-chicken-costume to do pretty much anything. After three minutes of experimentation, the chicken was able to obey all commands, including "read a... continue reading »Casinos Hit Audience Paydirt on Anti-Gambling SitesCompulsive gamblers visiting the Gamblers Anonymous site in Australia are finding themselves the target of a pop-up gambling advertising campaign. The offshore casinos are exploiting the help-seeking gamblers at their weakest moments. Australia has five times the poker machines per... continue reading »Gmail Faces State ResistanceA Fremont, CA state senator bought the privacy hype on Google's new Gmail service, indicating she will draft legislation to prevent Google from putting "a massive billboard in the middle of your home." While apparently quite happy to have California... continue reading »TV's Clutter Grows, Suggests Marketers Don't MindTelevision continues to teach the Internet a lesson, showing that when available inventory levels fall, adding additional ad placements - or "clutter," as it has become known in excessive levels - will not dampen advertiser enthusiasm, even if it makes... continue reading »Earthlink Offers Pay TV Stuff on WebEarthlink joined the likes of Microsoft and AOL in offering a premium subscription service to get rich media (read television) content. Earthlink will provide professional baseball audio and Nascar coverage, among other content, for about $10 a month. MarketingVOX, hopping... continue reading »A First: Every Week Over $1 Billion in 2004So far this year, and for the first full quarter ever, online retail sales booked more than $1 billion for each individual week. The last week of the first quarter just edged over the mark, scoring $1.07 billion, up about... continue reading »AOL May Face SEC Charges on Online Ad BookingsOnly a day after the story that AOL is winning back agency hearts and minds with a rebuilt and reinvigorated sales force, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) let the other shoe drop, making public the "Wells notice" that signifies... continue reading »NYT Breaks Rev, Profit RecordsContinuing the trend of great news coming from publicly traded ad sales firms, New York Times Digital reported a $8.4 million profit on revenues of more than $25 million. The record quarter more than doubled both profits and revenue over... continue reading »Retailers Say Amazon Placement WorksStores hopping onto Amazon.com's tab bar may have been seen as having admitting defeat in their own, independent e-commerce efforts, but results are showing that companies like Lands' End are reaping massive customer acquisition benefits from the Amazon traffic spigot.... continue reading »Google Damns Legal Torpedoes, Opens up Trademarked TermsGoogle reversed course and will allow bidders to buy trademarked keywords, so long as bidders reside in Canada or the U.S. Previously, Google had hemmed in the ability to purchase competitive and trademarked terms, as it found itself in increasingly... continue reading »DMA Not Publicly Policing MembersThe Direct Marketing Association (DMA) dealt with 23 ethics complaints on members in the last half of 2003, but it issued no citations. A report by the DMA's Ethics Committee mentioned several concerns - among them negative-option trial offers, misleading... continue reading »Personalized Fundraising Efforts Fair BestA recent study by Luth Research and Kintera Inc. found, unsurprisingly, that people are more likely to donate to a cause if a friend asks them to do so. The study determined 58.4 percent made a donation because a friend... continue reading » |