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October 2004
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Viral Marketing Association Launches ManifestoAfter a grueling debate in London between viral marketeer Justin Kirby and The British IAB's Danny Meadows-Klue, the Viral & Buzz Marketing Association released what they call the viral manifesto, a document defining viral marketing and expressing some best practices.... continue reading »Google May Charge for Gmail ExtrasRecent changes on the Gmail interface indicate that elements of the service may in the future require paid subscriptions. Automatic email forwarding, released two days ago quietly, is "free during the test," according to Google's help area. An email notifier,... continue reading »Study: Word-of-Mouth Hikes Site Visit Likelihood 50 PercentPeople exposed locally to the use of an online commerce site, or even discussions about it, are 50 percent more likely to try that same site. The finding comes in a Wharton study of the "neighborhood effect," word-of-mouth and other... continue reading »E-Tailers Caught Unready for Early Holiday ShoppingFive out of six online retailers don't plan to field their holiday season promotions until November, well after the date Shop.org and BizRate say the seasonal shopping begins. Their Online Holiday Mood Study shows that shoppers have been starting... continue reading »New Snap Search Engine Offers Pay-Per-ActionOverture co-founder Bill Gross launched a new search engine, called Snap. Preceded by much speculation, encouraged by a large PR effort, Snap turns out to be an aggregated search engine - using results mostly from LookSmart, Gigablast and Open Directory... continue reading »15 Percent of Retail Spend Influenced by Sites, Despite Offline PurchasesPeople conducting product research online bought almost $300 billion worth of goods due to their research findings, The Dieringer Group reports, but only about 37 percent of those purchases were made on the web. The study found that almost two... continue reading »Search Engine Adds Separate Blog IndexSecond-tier search engine IceRocket added a blog searching feature that reads through the web diaries' syndicated text feeds to separate out blog content from other search listings. The service provides results that would otherwise only be had at one of... continue reading »eMarketer: Q4 Net Sales to Grow ExplosivelyeMarketer stuck its neck out and predicted 28 percent growth in this quarter's online retail sales, excluding travel and auction sites. The research firm, analyzing estimates from the government and private firms, pegged online sales for Q4 at $22.3 billion,... continue reading »Web Sales to Overtake Phone Orders for CatalogsDoubleClick's Abacus division released a study on catalogs showing that people are increasingly turning to the web to make their catalog purchases. Already accounting for 30 percent of transactions in 2003, Abacus expects this year to see 36 percent web... continue reading »Social Network Service: Bump Up Search Results PlacementSocial network ZeroDegrees is publishing versions of user profiles linked together in a way designed to provide search engines with highly reliable, relevant relationship information. ZeroDegrees users may find their linked homepages moving higher up among search engine results. The... continue reading »Google Launches SMS ApplicationGoogle launched a Short Message Service SMS application allowing mobile phone users to get instant access to Google's local search functions. But it expects a lot out of phone users, requiring them to learn a new syntax ("46645 pizza 94043,"... continue reading »SEMPO Campaign Generates ComplaintsSearchEngineLowdown reports on the buzz around the new SEMPO campaign on search engine-related bulletin boards. The search engine trade group's new ad campaign appeared to link viewers to a page that allowed them to search only a subset of SEMPO... continue reading »FTC Makes 'First' Case Against Spyware RabbleThe New York Times reports that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lodged the first case against a spyware firm, asking for a temporary restraining order against the two companies Seismic Entertainment Productions and Smartbot.Net as well as their owner, Sanford... continue reading »New AOL Browser Rumors SolidifiedPaidContent points to reports (and a screenshot) that AOL is testing its own browser, one that has many of the new features that the dead-in-the-water-for-two-years Internet Explorer does not. Since Microsoft won the browser war several years ago, garnering an... continue reading »JibJab Releases Newest: 'It's Good to Be in D.C.'JibJab, the production company that brought online political satire to the general public with its last presidential race parody, launched a new installment, this time at the behest of Jay Leno's Tonight Show. The brief viral video makes fun of... continue reading »Wired: Web Traffic Measuring StinksThey may wear very, very serious facial expressions and talk about methodologies and data integrity, but the way that syndicated research companies measure site traffic is seriously flawed. Wired reports that comScore and Nielsen, using roughly the same sort of... continue reading »Agency Relationship Study Shows Improvement from LowsAn annual survey on agency-client relationships showed marketers giving ad agencies another C- this year, rating them a 7.2 out of 10. The survey did show consistent improvement in most measures from last year's very low figures. The most notable... continue reading »Forecast: Global Net Spend to Continue RisingZenithOptimedia predicts that global online ad spending will continue to gain share against other media, growing from 3.5 percent this year to 4 percent in 2006. TV is also expected to rise just barely, up 0.1 percent to 37.7 percent... continue reading »Study Shows Likes, Dislikes for Online Video ChannelsMaven, a firm providing online video feeds for companies seeking to establish their own audiences for regular rich media distribution, published results from a market survey showing consumer likes and dislikes with online video channels. Consumer were most concerned that... continue reading »Video Ads Not Viewed in FullNate Elliott points to Unicast research showing that while viewers are watching more of online video advertising (18 seconds, up from 16 seconds), they're still watching just a little more than half of the ad. Elliott has what sounds like... continue reading »CNET: AOL to Use IE Code in New BrowserCNET added to the story reported last week by eWeek and PaidContent that AOL would release a new browser to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Anonymous CNET sources tell the news site that the new browser will actually incorporate Microsoft's... continue reading »U.K. Net Spending Up 76 PercentBritish online advertising is beginning to boom in a similar proportion to that of the U.S. In the first half of 2004, marketers spent the equivalent of $478 million in U.K. online advertising, crossing the mark of three percent of... continue reading »Search Proves Most Efficient Lead Gen MediumWhile the data is old (March 2003), search appears to be the most efficient lead generation vehicle. The average lead from search engine marketing costs 29 cents. For email it is 50 cents. Yellow pages directories jump up to... continue reading »Kayak.com Bows Travel Price Site, Google Biz ModelSeeing existing travel sites as beholden to their sponsors, veterans of Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity teamed together to create Kayak.com, a site that crawls more than 60 travel sites to create pricing charts for hotels and airfares. The public beta... continue reading »Connection Speed Critical in E-commerce GrowthcomScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said that broadband access has a large boosting effect on individuals' spending levels online, causing broadbanders to spend half again as much as what dial-up access people spend on e-commerce. Also, he said that comScore has... continue reading »DoubleClick Upgrades Ad ManagementDoubleClick updated its advertiser and publisher reporting interfaces, adding Spotlight reporting to its publishers' ad management system and adding more criteria against which advertisers can generate reports.... continue reading »Hammond Appointed Quris VPEmail services company Quris hired Sally Hammond as vice president of Marketing and Sales. She previously worked for Gartner Group, Kodak/RSI and Dalahaye Medialink Worldwide. Quris focuses on the Fortune 1,000 market.... continue reading »Micropayments More Common, Big MarketA Peppercoin and Ipsos-Reid study showed that about one in six people surveyed said they had used credit cards or other non-cash means to buy something for less than $5 - the threshold of a "micropayment." Almost as many -... continue reading »Fathom Starts Keyword Price IndexFathom Online started a Keyword Price Index, a measurement of click prices on search engines in a series of eight industry market baskets of search phrases. September showed, as expected, a wide diversity of click prices depending on the category.... continue reading »Online Dating Market Hotter, Less Profitable for BiggiesOnline dating companies had it too good. After experiencing many years of rapid growth, many new players are flooding the market - some with massive resources and huge established audiences from other niches. This has led to cutbacks at the... continue reading »Local Media to Make Do with National AdvertisersJupiter predicts that all the new and interesting local advertising opportunities popping up online will be largely used by national advertisers, as it will take at least three to five years for regional firms to get comfortable with the new... continue reading »Mass. AG Punts Anti-Spam CaseThe Massachusetts spam case against DC Enterprises - one of the many cases billed as a "first" Can-Spam Act case - settled for the relatively small sum of $25,000. The Floridian-owned company had been accused of sending out mortgage spam.... continue reading »China Suffers Censorship SetbackChina's ongoing battle to control its citizens' internet usage is again slowing down its version of the web. It employs massive filtering servers to try to prevent citizens from seeing certain types of content, particularly stories and commentary focused on... continue reading »Weather.com Moves into Adware to Head off WeatherBugWeather.com, one of the largest online media properties, increased the downloads of its adware weather checking application by about seven times over the course of the last few months. It also appointed senior managers to groom that side of the... continue reading »E-Tailers Expect Generous Holiday SeasonAlmost all online retailers expect more sales this holiday season relative to last year's. A full 98 percent reported they expect sales gains, according to a Shop.org/BizRate.com study. For their part, a third of consumers said they planned to spend... continue reading »$20 Billion Microsoft Warchest Looms over Media BizPaidContent comments on reports that Microsoft plans to blow half its research and development budget over the next few years on gaining entry into the media business - a sum totaling as much as $20 billion. Specifically, it hopes to... continue reading »Froogle U.K. Launched for RealFroogle has finally launched in the U.K. with a true British bent. The early version didn't have many pound-denominated products. The Google Blog had Froogle's product manager, Karen Padham, make the announcement.... continue reading »Yellow Pages Group Rebrands, to Launch CampaignThe overly complicated name of the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association (YPIMA) has been shortened to the Yellow Pages Association (YPA), at once gaining greater clarity but simultaneously missing the opportunity to call itself something that would also imply online... continue reading »Yahoo Reports Massive GrowthYahoo reported explosive growth for the recently ended quarter, posting a tripling of marketing services revenue (which includes both search and regular advertising) to $765 million. Profits quadrupled to $253 million, although about half of that came through the sale... continue reading »PayPal Redesign Causes Payment OutagesA site redesign goof led to the brief crippling of eBay's Paypal service. Monday and Tuesday saw slowdowns or outright outages. The last months have seen many payment services fall victim to extortion schemes centering on denial of service attacks,... continue reading »Eyeblaster Hires Agency, Plans Rich Media PushRich media concern Eyeblaster hired ad agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine to create its own rich media campaign. Eyeblaster hired the agency without a pitch after having been impressed with its reel. The ads are scheduled to run first in... continue reading »Tivo Users Skipping Ads More than ThoughtA Media Planning Group study found that nine out of ten respondents said they usually or always skip ads - even with live programming - when they use their digital video recorders (DVRs). Almost half noted that some commercials have... continue reading »Lower Search Ads Produce Better Leads (Sometimes)Atlas DMT released a study showing that lower-ranked paid search placements on low-volume search phrases convert even better than the higher-placed placements. This may indicate that clicks coming from the lower placements imply that the reader is more qualified relative... continue reading »More Spam in Can-Spam ComplianceA tracking study keeping tabs on unsolicited commercial email compliance with Can-Spam Act provisions showed that more spam was in compliance in September than at any previous time measured. But that level is a lowly four percent. Still, it is... continue reading »AMA Comes Up with 'Marketing' ConvolutionWhat is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders"? Could it be the employee values statement of... continue reading »Reuters to Start Video News SiteReuters launched what it calls an interactive television platform on a website. Like several news organizations conducting redesigns, including ABC News and CBS MarketWatch, Reuters is emphasizing canned video content. The show will be available next year as part of... continue reading »Nielsen, Revenue Science Team to Behaviorally SegmentBehavioral targeting firm Revenue Science teamed with Nielsen/NetRatings to develop a matrix by which different sites' ad segments might be compared against one another. The service combines Nielsen's information about internet households with Revenue Science's data on their various behavioral... continue reading »eBay Taking Toll on Newspaper ClassifiedsA Classified Intelligence study shows that the effects of eBay and other auction sites are finally taking a toll on newspaper classifieds. Two thirds of newspapers surveyed admitted they'd felt a "major" or "moderate" effect from online competition. As a... continue reading »Russian Advertising Site Provides English EditionA Russian trade site on media and advertising launched an English language edition (www.media-online.ru), which keeps track of major media developments globally, with a special emphasis on Russian companies. A quick perusal shows it to be well translated, often updated... continue reading » |