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September 2004
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Tivo-Netflix Dreamteam to Offer Instant VideosPaidContent reports that Netflix and Tivo - two companies that many early adopters in consumer media love - will start to work together to deliver rented movies via online connections to Tivo digital video recorders (DVRs). The two firms, both... continue reading »DMA Ethics Probe Catches Non-MembersThe Direct Marketing Association, having conducted 30 investigations into companies using shady practices, cited two non-member firms to regulatory authorities. Of the 30 cases, five involved online marketing. Remove.org - a company that purported to remove people from email lists... continue reading »FareChase Adopts Yahoo Search TechYahoo started testing out its FareChase travel comparison shopping site last night. Yahoo said the new application is an example of its effort to apply its search technology to more and more services. FareChase was purchased by Yahoo in July.... continue reading »Online Retail Tracking Offline GrowthOnline spending grew 13 percent for the third week in August, according to comScore, just a couple percentage points above the growth rate ShopperTrak reported for general retail sales. comScore also reported online travel spending growth of 24 percent. Internet... continue reading »Online Content Cheaper, May Reflect Supply CompetitionA Poynter blogger noted that online content is sometimes valued at a lower rate than the "real world" equivalent. He points to the example of Blockbuster's subscription deals: the offline version costs $25 a month for the ability to rent... continue reading »U.K. Banner Study: Ad Page Location KeyBunnyfoot released another study on ad banners, still 40 percent of online spending in the U.K. It found that users spend almost a quarter of their time on a page looking at the banner. Location of the ads on the... continue reading »Marketers Antsy about Search Engines' Intimate KnowledgeSome marketers are getting nervous that search engines are learning a little bit too much information about their businesses, perhaps gaining the ability to use that information to squeeze higher rates out of businesses that are able to make search... continue reading »Ask Spidering RSS Feeds for Mystery ApplicationSearchEngineLowdown points out that Ask Jeeves has been spidering syndication feeds, although it doesn't currently provide an application that would use this information. The search journal speculates that Ask intends to place a link to the RSS feed next to... continue reading »Micropayments Finally FashionableCompanies like Beenz, Flooz and DigiCash came too early, providing micropayment systems during the dot.com boom before major intellectual property holders - like movie studios and record labels - were willing to try out single sale business models. Now, with... continue reading »Audience Measurement So Political, Jackson Endorses NielsenIn a sign that Nielsen's monopoly of TV viewing statistics might have gotten - heaven forefend - political, Reverend Jesse Jackson endorsed the new launch of the ratings firm's new local people meters. As measurement gets refined in the traditional... continue reading »U.S. Gives Microsoft Tabbed Browsing PatentThe U.S. Patent Office granted Microsoft a patent on tabbed browsing, a concept Microsoft claimed as its own seven years ago in a 1997 application. Just about all browsers today enable a feature that allows readers to tab through links... continue reading »Google Looks to Context, Not Search for Future GrowthDM News surveyed the search engine marketing industry and found the concentration of future inventory lies in contextual marketing, through products like Google's AdSense. Did-It's Kevin Lee said that AdSense is where Google must find its growth, as expanding its... continue reading »SendTec Sold to Theglobe.comTheglobe.com, once an internet high-flyer, bought online direct marketing agency SendTec for $6 million in cash and stock worth about $14 million more. Other goodies are in store for SendTec owners if the shop continues to perform well. Theglobe.com, owns... continue reading »Eye Tracking Study Reveals Ad Viewing BehaviorThe Poynter Institute published a set of observations made while studying the eye movements of web surfers, finding that ads get viewed (or don't) in large part due to page placement and several specific design elements. Some of the findings... continue reading »Skylist Intros ISP Relationship ConsultancyEmail service provider Skylist entered the ISP relationship consultancy market, offering to help email marketers stay on the good side of spam-crazed internet service providers. Skylist analyzes marketers' practices and makes recommended changes. It then manages the white listing process... continue reading »Most Online Car Quotes Beget SalesAutobytel reports that two thirds of those who sought price quotes actually purchased a car. More than a third of those bought used cars, rather than new. Often then seek quotes for high-end and new vehicles, but they wind up... continue reading »AIM Head InterviewedClickZ interviewed the new head of the Association of Interactive Marketers (AIM), Michael Aronowitz, noting that the group has had a blow-up in the past with its parent, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). During the course of the interview, Aronowitz... continue reading »Study: Online Ads LoathedThe Ponemon Institute reports, as many have before, that consumers remain reluctant to pay for online content, yet they dislike online ads. Unsurprisingly, four out of five said they found pop-ups annoying, and three out of five found felt that... continue reading »WebTrends Leaves Weber, Seeks Smaller FirmDM News reports that WebTrends, the web metrics brand owned by NetIQ, is splitting with its PR firm Weber Shandwick. The report says the analytics firm will seek a smaller agency.... continue reading »OgilvyInteractive Loses HeadOgilvyInteractive CEO Mike Windsor will leave to join Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to run its marketing department. Windsor has been a well-known agency head for many high-tech and business-to-business clients, including Microsoft, Motorola and IBM at several agencies. No immediate... continue reading »Poynter Study Mystery: Some People Randomly ClickOne of the managers of the Poynter study, reported yesterday, that tracked eye movements to determine how users viewed (or didn't view) online ads noticed a funny finding that didn't make it into the final results. It turns out that... continue reading »Sullivan Amicably Leaves SEMPODanny Sullivan, the patron blogger of search engine happenings, wrote a 5,400-word piece analyzing the (mostly) good and (very few) bad elements of SEMPO, the search trade organization. Those who make it all the way to the bottom will find... continue reading »Swedish Mobile Firm Acquired by European AgencyAdverblog reports that Continental mobile marketing agency 12Snap will acquire Swedish mobile firm Lokomobil, expanding in the E.U. area and also opening itself up to a highly sophisticated group of consumers against which it can more properly test mobile programs.... continue reading »P&G to Choose Pampers Digital AgencyAdWeek reports that P&G will soon select a new interactive agency for its Pampers division. The current shop, Cincinnati-based Bridge Worldwide, is not in the running. Currently, Saatchi & Saatchi handles the offline business. Current contenders for the interactive portion... continue reading »Email Open Rates Dropping QuicklyA Bigfoot study of email response rates showed that, with some notable exceptions, email marketing is getting tougher. The unique open rate - a measure of how many individuals looked at a commercial email sent to them - declined further... continue reading »Moderates' Spyware Bill AdvancesThe House Judiciary Committee voted through the anti-spyware bill designed in part to head of the slash-and-burn "Bono Bill" spyware legislation that would have limited the use of certain web design methods, even for legal uses. The bill does not... continue reading »Standards Body Balking at Sender ID RecommendationThe internet standards committee considering whether or not to adopt Microsoft's Sender ID standard for helping tamp down spam attacks may reject the standard due to intellectual property claims Microsoft wants to maintain over the technology. Several open source foundations,... continue reading »Harris Interactive Buys WirthlinWorldwideResearch firm Harris Interactive bought competitor WirthlinWorldwide for $41.8 million in cash and stock. The deal gives Harris 300 additional clients and about $50 million more in annual revenues, about a third more than it predicted it would see this... continue reading »Deutsch Adds Direct to Monster DutiesMonster chose directDeutch to be its agency of record for direct marketing. Its overall marketing budget, including direct, amounts to about $125 million. Last year Deutsch won the general media account and iDeutsch took the interactive portion. BtoB Online reports.... continue reading »Aegis's 'Half Digital' Stat Hinges on TechnicalitiesThe recent Aegis financial report that dropped the interesting statistic that it predicted half of all media to be digital by 2007 turns out to have referred to an internal study that counts a great deal of media consumers consider... continue reading »Cool Robots Disappoint, Was Just BMW Viral CampaignAs suspected, the "scientist" sites popping up last spring proved to be hoaxes, albeit alluring ones. The effort was part of a BMW Mini viral campaign put together by the Crispin Porter crew, of Subservient Chicken fame, which can be... continue reading »Spam Receding Quickly, Has Long Way to GoIt won't be ballyhooed by the anti-spam technology companies quite like the doom-by-spam press releases we've seen in the past few years, but MessageLabs found that some forms of the scourge have actually decreased. Business emails now have less than... continue reading »MLB Sued for Violating Sports Coverage PatentsAn intellectual property firm sued Major League Baseball (MLB) for allegedly infringing several patents that involve real-time sports coverage. The features that DDB Technologies claims are covered include MLB's simulations of live games, its video highlights reels and its fantasy... continue reading »Google News Japan Missing Big PiecePaidContent pointed to a Japanese news account of Googles September 1 launch of the Japanese version of Google News. The site failed to include the biggest Japanese newspaper as part of its policy to leave alone those sites that choose... continue reading »Online Classifieds Still Beating Offline GrowthOnline job classifieds are growing about twice as fast as their print equivalents. The second quarter of 2004 saw about 40 percent online growth versus print's 20 percent growth, according to data from Corzen and the Newspaper Association of America... continue reading »Micropayment Revenues Doubling +A Celent Communications study reports that email payments, like those from PayPal, will continue to grow quickly, more than doubling between 2003 and 2005. The firm predicted about 135 percent growth in service fees from $134 million last year to... continue reading »Shopping.com Bows to Chilly IPO MarketFacing a chillier initial public offering market, Shopping.com lowered its expectations of what it could get for its upcoming IPO to $126 million from $143 million. Insiders also cut the number of shares they would cash in by about a... continue reading »Spammers Adopting SPF to Appear LegitProponents of anti-spam identification schemes have long said that the identifying of a sender is only half of the protection needed to thwart spam, and a new study shows this to be true. Email service provider MX Logic showed that... continue reading »Internet Population to Hit Billion MarkClickZ's Stats site, formerly CyberAtlas, compiled a few estimates of internet populations both globally and by nation. The Computer Industry Almanac reports that the current population sits at about 934 million and is projected to grow to just over a... continue reading »Keynote Picks up Third Web Research FirmKeynote, famed as the maker of website performance measurement tools that report how terrible major e-commerce firm sites do each Christmas season, purchased Vividence, the online customer research tool maker. Keynote previously acquired two other online research firms: Enviz and... continue reading »State Site Blocking Law Ruled DeadAn effort by the conservative Pennsylvania state government to ban a blacklist of sites that included some pornography sites (and some odd non-porn choices) finally was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. The law put in place criminal penalties for... continue reading »Common Behavioral Segments SuggestedTacoda, the behavioral targeting technology firm, started pushing 22 broad behavior categories it has as the seeds of an industry standard. Some targeting firms have been cobbling together different behavioral profiles for each individual client. But advertisers with big budgets... continue reading »Fidelity Collects One in Six Google A SharesMarketWatch reports that mutual fund firm Fidelity's parent company FMR had collected more than 15 percent of Google's newly minted Class A shares. Google's share structure was designed such that even acquiring a majority of Class A shares will not... continue reading »Weather.com Expands Ad OfferingsWeather.com will now offer advertorials and the ability to switch out creative based on current weather. Scott's, a company that makes lawn fertilizer, will test out the program in an attempt to reach viewers who tend to read the site... continue reading »Britney to Star in Arden Online AdBritney Spears will star in online ads featuring an Elizabeth Arden fragrance called Curious. The ad is to break first late this week on the Arden website, and Revolution Magazine reports that it will be "provocative." Revolution reports.... continue reading »WPP to Buy Grey for $1.4 BillionWPP Group, owner of JWT and Ogilvy, won the bidding for Grey Global Group, offering $1,005 per share, half in cash and half in stock. Grey's stock previously traded at $940. The offer would value the last of the independent... continue reading »Internet Growth Sees New SpurtThe "plateau" in internet penetration figures Harris Interactive reported at the beginning of this year turned out to be a false peak. After growing only two percent between 2002 and 2003, the penetration figures showed four percent growth in the... continue reading »PayPal to Fine Accounts $500 for Sin PurchasesPayPal will enforce its morals clauses with extra fines and fees starting September 24. The terms of service have long banned the purchase of adult content, shady prescription drugs dealings and gambling services, and the e-commerce payment firm owned by... continue reading »ValueClick Launches Group to Push BrandingValueClick added a ValueClick Brand group to its offerings, a division that will pull together different media and technologies needed to handle the unique needs of a major brand campaign, including targeting, broad reach abilities, measurement technologies, and the more... continue reading » |