|
|
|
Home »
Archives »
October 2004
« Previous Entries · · Next Entries »
Abacus Enters FranceDoubleClick's consumer data division Abacus launched a division in Lille, France, seeking to gain as clients French catalog and direct marketers. The move is most notable for its boldness in directly facing Europe's extreme privacy laws in the very market... continue reading »JibJab Creator: We Just Wanted to Break into TV, MoviesIn an interview with CNET, JibJab co-creator Gregg Spiridellis talks about how the "This Land is Your Land" and "DC" animations were inspired and developed. It turns out that the endeavors have largely been a cheap means to get the... continue reading »Lycos 'Circles' Moves Portal to Social Network StructureLycos announced it is delivering on plans to move from portal to a "Lycos Circles" social network structure, providing blogging, networking, and publishing tools to members so that they can better stay connected to one another. They plan to run... continue reading »Coming: Game Previews for Potential SponsorsA U.K. firm plans to come out with a guide to upcoming video games for advertisers, affording them the opportunity to pick out which titles they might want to sponsor. Cocojambo plans to release the guide to subscribers on December... continue reading »FTC Declines DM News FOIA RequestThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proved cagey again when faced with a Freedom of Information Act request from DM News requesting information about the parties accessing the no-call registry. The FTC has previously avoided a similar one from the American... continue reading »Click Fraud May Spawn Advertiser SuitsSearchEngineGuide points to a SearchEngineWatch comprehensive media review of the topic of click fraud, the practice of creating meaningless clicks in order to bilk advertisers out of PPC fees. Everyone knows it is becoming more prevalent - one study even... continue reading »AOL to Bow Desktop Search AgentAOL appears ready to launch its own desktop search application, one that will reportedly allow for searching not only on the web, but also through a users own Microsoft Office documents, as well as other formats, such as PDF and... continue reading »Current VC Hype: Addressable TVApplying internet-like targeting to TV ads is becoming a more popular venture capital play. Cable vendors say they will provide addressable advertising sometime between 2006 and 2008. In one example, Grey Ventures hopes to capture "a little of that" $50... continue reading »Google Desktop LaunchedGoogle finally launched its secretive desktop search effort, formerly codenamed Puffin and now dubbed Google Desktop. It allows searching through documents such as Microsoft Office files and other hard drive files, sorting them in the same interface, with most of... continue reading »Mamma.com Offers Site Search to PublishersMamma.com, a meta search engine firm, started offering to sites on its Mamma Media Solutions network an application that will allow those customers to offer Mamma's meta search functions on their own pages, sharing in the revenue from paid links.... continue reading »CNET Buys Two Chinese SitesCNET, along with reporting hefty quarterly revenues, announced it is in the process of acquiring two Chinese websites, ZOL and Fengniao. The transactions will cost CNET $16 million. ZOL is a CNET-like site focusing on Northern China. Fengniao is a... continue reading »Google's Desktop Search Index a Personal Info RepositoryDanny Sullivan explores some of the privacy issues surrounding Google's launch yesterday of its desktop search tool. While the product provides few new privacy risks - most have been present with other versions of search - it does create a... continue reading »Spyware Cause: Lazy Online Ad BuyersUnderscore Marketing chief Tom Hespos wrote on his blog that advertisers can't avert their eyes and claim not to know the origin of all this spyware junk cluttering up (and often grinding to a halt) people's computers. He directly accuses... continue reading »Overture Hones Search OfferingOverture announced yesterday that it launched honed versions of its targeting, budgeting and tracking features. It combined its "phrase" and "broad match" types into one matching type now called "advanced." The budgeting features caught up to Google's, with daily budgets... continue reading »RSS Feeds Sprout AdsRSS feeds are sprouting ads, and readers don't seem to care. Several large site networks have introduced advertising in their feeds over the last few weeks, including Topix.net, Moreover Technologies, Feedster and Weblogs. That said, no large advertisers have seized... continue reading »Wotbox Bucks Trend, Offers Paid InclusionBucking the trend to abandon paid inclusion, British search company Wotbox announced a new program that would guarantee pages made it into search indices for the price of one pound per page (about $1.50). All major search engines in the... continue reading »Pop-Ups Down, Not OutTwo months after Microsoft gave most new browsers a pop-up blocker, not a lot has changed. Both before and after, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that pop-ups constituted about one in fifteen online ad impressions. One pop-up purveyor told CNET that he estimated... continue reading »Study: Brits Say TV Tops Ad Effectiveness, Email NextAn IPT study in the U.K. showed that consumers there believe email to be the second most effective medium, just behind television, and way ahead of radio, the next highest on their list. The report also found that 10 out... continue reading »Car Dealers Need Web Apps to Get Customer NodJupiter Research reports that car dealers increase the odds of customers coming back when they add to their websites features like financing calculators and customized car configurators. According to analyst Belis Aksoy, seven out of ten people doing online research... continue reading »Viewers: Want TV on TV, not PCMichael Gartenberg, of Jupiter Research, reports that while only about a third of computer users report wanting to record TV for later computer playback, that figure rockets up to more than half of users when they can later replay the... continue reading »PlanetOut IPO a SuccessPlanetOut's on-again-off-again initial public offering finally happened yesterday, the stock starting off in the low end of its predicted range, rising from $9 per share over the course of the day to end at $10.33.... continue reading »Evite Morphs into Social Network for SocializersEvite, the company that helped people plan parties, tweaked its offerings and combined them with other InterActiveCorp holdings to construct a sort of social network that allows people to recommend to one another bars, restaurants and other relevant facilities. Evite... continue reading »So Is It 'Puffin' or 'Fluffy Bunny'?SearchEnglineLowdown reported that the Google Desktop Search launched yesterday had been internally code named "Puffin." But flacks told the AP that the desktop play had been called "Fluffy Bunny" in the Silicon Valley halls of Google. It may be that... continue reading »E-Commerce Growth Rocketing UpwardRipped out of the doldrums online retail has been experiencing in the middle of 2004, e-commerce spending for the week ending September 26 vaulted up 53 percent over the same period last year - a radical departure from generally torpid... continue reading »Study: Cable Networks Stingy with 'A' SlotsA Media IQ study reports cable networks generally fail to provide fair rotations of commercials into the favorable "A" slots, as their contracts require. Networks like E!, Comedy Central and VH1 tend to run their own promotional spots in the... continue reading »AOL Sinking Out of Top 3 Ad SitesAOL, once the advertising giant on the internet, has fallen out of the top three in terms of ad sales. Accounting scandals, dot-com bubble bursting and subscription-oriented business models aside, much of the problem stemmed from a highly dysfunctional sales... continue reading »Google Chooses DomainKeysGoogle's Gmail started putting DomainKeys signatures into its outgoing emails, joining up with Yahoo's proprietary system of sender verification. The DomainKeys system competes with Microsoft's Sender ID as a mechanism by which ISPs can tell whether or not email comes... continue reading »Amazon's Silly 'One-Click' Patent Survives Sillier Patent ChallengeAmazon successfully defended its silly "one-click" patent against an even sillier claim by IPXL Holdings LLC that a patent IPXL holds pre-empts the one-click "technology." Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled summarily in Amazon's favor, agreeing with the e-commerce giant's contention that... continue reading »Google Desktop Search Once 'Total Recall'Ripping apart the Google Desktop Search application, coders are discovering artifacts that may - or may not - suggest the future direction of Google's development efforts. One security consultant, finding a "google_im://" protocol in the code jumped to the conclusion... continue reading »Microsoft Testing Own Social NetworkMicrosoft has been testing out its own social network experiment, positioned as a means to share digital media among "small friendship groups," as well as blog. The product is not open to uninvited members, and its copyright notice extends back... continue reading »Wireless Spam Ban Starts TodayToday the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) new rules against wireless spam go into effect, showing the most strict limitations involved in last year's Can-Spam legislation. The law bans unsolicited commercial wireless messages, a level of restriction that many anti-spam advocates... continue reading »FBI: Direct Marketers Can Help Fight Identity TheftAn FBI official spoke at a Direct Marketing Association (DMA) show, praising the DMA's Slam Spam effort, and indicating that the direct marketing industry could also help with efforts against identity theft. The Slam Spam effort started out as a... continue reading »Telemarketing Beats Email in Response RatesA Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study showed that telemarketing led a list of a dozen different direct response media in terms of response rates. With a 5.78 response rate, the medium well out paced the next closest rivals, which tended... continue reading »Click Inflation Hitting Longer Search PhrasesCommenting on a chart appearing on BatelleMedia, SearchEngineLowdown notes that advertisers are starting to place higher bids on longer search phrases. The search blog notes that advertisers are either discovering that longer phrases convert better or they're just seeking the... continue reading »Study: We're All Email SlavesDoubleClick published a massive tracking study on email habits, showing that more and more people are becoming slaves to their email (33 percent versus 20 percent from the previous year). The average email user now gets 308 emails a week,... continue reading »Aquent Mocks Creative 'Genius'Aquent, a creative services firm, this morning launched a spoof of its own advertising campaign, a series of video ad interviews with brilliant creatives. The send-up shows a self-perceived marketing genius describing how he was able to save an advertising... continue reading »U.K. Study Finds Online Ad Budgets GrowingA British online advertising group published a quarterly study showing internet advertising to be growing in popularity faster than other media. Only one in 16 businesses surveyed reported a decline in online ad budgets, while those spending more than 10... continue reading »Yankee Predicts Massive Advergaming GrowthThe Yankee Group reports that advertisers are beginning to consider electronic games to be an important medium, especially for reaching elusive young men. The research firm predicts that U.S. companies will spend more than a quarter billion dollars on game... continue reading »Buy.com Buys Promotional 'Social Network'Buy.com bought Metails.com, a combination social network and peer recommendation rewards program. The network lets users recommend products to one another, and grants small commissions to people who successfully get their friends and colleagues to buy things. In a brief... continue reading »ThirdScreen Intros Wireless Planning Tool, Ad NetworkThirdScreen, a property of W2 Group, launched a wireless ad network and planning tool for media buyers. The products allow marketers to find wireless inventory that matches their target audiences. The company reports that spending on wireless has increased dramatically... continue reading »Nielsen, Activision Partner in In-Game Ad TestNielsen, seeking to defend its media measurement dominance, partnered with game maker Activision to test out in-game advertising measurement methods. The move comes after two independent firms have already announced advergaming ad networks, allowing for internet-like measurement of in-game ad... continue reading »Forrester: Holiday E-Commerce Growth to CoolWith e-commerce on its feet and running, many online retailers aren't planning the internet sales, promotions, free shipping and other share-driving events that helped the internet increase its proportion of holiday sales in years past. According to a new Forrester... continue reading »DoubleClick Offers Real-Time Commerce Email Publishing SystemDoubleClick launched a real-time email publishing system geared to send commerce-related emails triggered by customer interactions. The system can, for instance, send off emails including suggestions for related products, along with a thank you for a purchase. DoubleClick also published... continue reading »Click Fraud ReduxClick fraud joined the pantheon of spam and spyware as popular internet bogeymen, as The New York Times published a derivative piece covering the topic generally. The piece mentioned the seminal Times of India piece that brought a great deal... continue reading »E-Commerce Sees Late Growth SprintHot on the heels of a more than 50 percent boost, comScore announced that the week ending October 3 saw even bigger e-commerce increases, with revenues shooting up 61 percent. Internet sales hit $1.46 billion, in a week during which... continue reading »Do-Not-Call Registry May Have Turned DMA Study on its HeadThe Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study released yesterday shows radically different results from a similar study conducted the year before, largely because the DMA's measurement of revenue coming from each telemarketing response rose inexplicably from just over six dollars to... continue reading »AJinteractive Merges Ask Jeeves, ISH Brands for Ad SalesAsk Jeeves combined the sales operations of its flagship search brand with those of the recently acquired Internet Search Holdings brands to create what it calls AJinteractive. Now MaxOnline, Excite, My Way, iWon and Ask Jeeves will be sold together... continue reading »LookSmart Hires New CEOLookSmart hired David Hills as its new CEO, sending Interim CEO Damian Smith back to Australia. Hills comes from an online sales and internet technology background, having most recently run the media solutions group for 24/7 Real Media. Prior to... continue reading »4 Behavioral Firms Put on ClickZ HotseatClickZ's Zachary Rogers interviews four heads of major behavioral targeting firms, trying to pin them down precisely on what they believe to be good versus bad data sharing practices. Tacoda, Revenue Science, DrivePM and AlmondNet executives all seem to agree... continue reading » |