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December 2004
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Web Analytics Key to Improving Holiday ResultseCommerce Times put together a comprehensive special report on the resurgence of web analytics and their importance to ferreting out success in critical and competitive shopping markets, like the holiday retail season.... continue reading »Senior Executives Unsure Agencies Understand their NeedsForbes.com and Euro RSCG, as reported by ClickZ, polled senior executives at major firms around the world, finding that while 72 percent believe advertising has a big effect on their markets' perceptions of their firms, more than two out of... continue reading »'Blog' Most Looked Up Word on WebMerriam-Webster said yesterday that the most looked-up word for 2004 on its website was "blog." Reuters reports that for 2005, Merriam-Webster's new "collegiate" dictionary will finally include the word. Its popularity among definition seekers may indicate increased exposure and influence... continue reading »Microsoft to Bow Blogging EnginePaidContent points out that Microsoft seems ready to launch its own blogging engine, taking on Google in yet another category. The MSN Spaces product is expected to offer free blogging tools as well as an Apple-like hub for sharing personal... continue reading »Singingfish Relaunches Video SearchAOL will launch an improved version of its Singingfish video search engine today, according to ClickZ. AOL acquired the company a year ago. The search engine will also break a consumer ad campaign to increase traffic. The advertising was developed... continue reading »Visa: Online Sales Growth Doubled General Black Friday GrowthVisa reported 28 percent gains in Black Friday online retail receipts, about double the growth rate seen for all November 26 sales, according to Internet Retailer. Total sales on Visa cards amounted to $234 million, up from $183 million in... continue reading »Shopzilla: Holiday Shoppers 1/4 DoneShopzilla's BizRate.com polled about 4,500 online shoppers over last weekend to find that the buyers indicated they were about a quarter done their holiday shopping, according to Internet Retailer. Almost half said that they would do the rest of their... continue reading »Newspapers Caught Cheating, Audits Called into QuestionAnd we thought that ad server discrepancies had gotten bad online. People in the print world are skulking about under much heightened scrutiny after a series of circulation overstatements were revealed. The most egregious of them so far was... continue reading »Geico Settles Keyword Case with OvertureMediaPost reports that Geico settled its copyright suit with Overture, leaving Google as the main defendant in the suit that will help determine whether or not search engines will be allowed to target ads based on brand name keyword searches.... continue reading »Jupiter: Net Adspend Up on Price HikesJupiter attributes much of the recently reported growth in online advertising to price increases, rather than additional inventory purchased. Jupiter analyst Nate Elliott said that increased rates "are the key driver of that growth across all three sectors," referring to... continue reading »BigBad Chair Charles Lard Dead at 58AdWeek reports that the chairman of Boston-based online agency BigBad died just prior to Thanksgiving after a long illness. Charles Lard was 58. Memorial donations may be sent to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Jimmy Fund, 10 Brookline Place West,... continue reading »New Netscape to Include Both Firefox, IECNET reports that AOL's new Netscape release will allow users to select which browser engine will handle specific web pages, taking into account the fact that a few sites out there are geared to be read only by Microsoft's Internet... continue reading »Marketscore Traffic Monitor Labeled 'Spyware'ComputerWeekly reports that IT executives are increasingly concerned about software that monitors internet usage. In particular, a program called Marketscore - the site for which is registered under the same address as that of comScore Networks - is being decried... continue reading »Domains Hit New Record, Credit Goes to MarketersInternetnews.com reports that domain name registrations are hotter than ever, with VeriSign showing 5.1 new domain names registered in the last quarter, almost half a million more than any previous quarter. Verisign attributed a lot of the growth to the... continue reading »Amazon Milestone: Books Now 2nd Biggest CategoryAmazon executives predicted it half a decade ago, but no one really believed it until today, when Amazon announced that books is no longer its largest category by sales volume. Internet Retailer reports that consumer electronics finally overtook the flagship... continue reading »Google Relaunches Discussion GroupsGoogle relaunched its discussion groups, according to a Times report, combining the vastness of the Usenet with a more polished set of affinity features already found on other portal sites like Yahoo. In 2001, Google bought the Usenet archives.... continue reading »Viewpoint to Buy UnicastThe Times reports that web video company Viewpoint agreed to buy rich media firm Unicast for $7.4 million. The deal is expected to close quickly, soon after the start of the new year. Unicast has clients that include AT&T and... continue reading »DMA Names Friendly Net Exec to Ethics CommitteeThe Direct Marketing Association (DMA) told ClickZ that Al DiGuido, ClickZ columnist and CEO of Bigfoot Interactive, will join its Ethics Policy Committee. Bigfoot Interactive was one several member online companies that tolerated the DMA's gutting last year of online... continue reading »A-List Bloggers Renting Selves for BrandsClickZ reports that HighBeam Research is jumping into the blogging business fray by hiring relatively well-known internet figure Christopher Locke to tout - via a blog - its upcoming content tool. Locke has been contracted for three months to assemble... continue reading »Microsoft's Blog Service to Be Banner SupportedThe AP reports a few additional details about Microsoft's impending release of its free blogging tool today. It will be supported by banner ads, and those with MSN Messenger or Hotmail accounts will get the service for free. The Pew... continue reading »Drug Company Runs Yahoo AIDS Day CampaignAdweek reports that Bristol-Myers Squibb is sponsoring World Aids Day ads on Yahoo's homepage today, promoting the Light to Unite campaign. The pharmaceutical company is the manufacturer of two AIDS drugs, Reyataz and Sustiva. The company is also exclusively sponsoring... continue reading »Some Google Tech and Methods RevealedSearchEngineLowdown points to an exceptionally long and comprehensive view of the vast technology requirements and the equally vast resources and innovation put behind the Google search engine. It's one part brute force and one part rocket science, and the comprehensive... continue reading »Snap Releases (Unimpressive) Finance InfoSearchEngineLowdown points to new search portal Snap's extremely forthcoming policy of revealing traffic and financial data, which doesn't seem to make a great business case for the firm. In October, the firm had $1,176.40 in gross revenue, which grew to... continue reading »Lycos Anti-Spam Attack More Powerful than IntendedZDNet UK reports that Lycos Europe's in-your-face anti-spam promotion may have been more effective than it intended. Ostensibly designed to slow but not take down spam servers, the "Make Love Not Spam" distributed computing screensaver appears to have nuked several... continue reading »Microsoft Sues More SpammersMicrosoft let loose another legal barrage against spammers, according to eCommerce Times. The software giant filed seven new actions against "John Does," making its current tally 115 legal actions, with 86 of those happening in the U.S.... continue reading »Firm Predicts Online Radio Ads to GrowBorrell Associates predicts, via ClickZ, that online radio ads will grow by about 56 percent per year for the next five years, growing from its current miniscule share of less than one half of a percent of current online advertising... continue reading »Slipping IE Figures QuestionedSome competing firms are questioning a report from two weeks ago that indicated Microsoft was losing its iron grip on the browser market. OneStat had indicated its log analyses showed Microsoft Internet Explorer marketshare to have fallen below 90 percent... continue reading »Google CFO: Click Fraud Threatens Biz ModelAccording to CNN, Google's CFO told an investor conference that something needs to be done about click fraud "really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model." The report asserts that the main fraud perpetrators are competitors... continue reading »New DMA Chief Upends Senior StaffThe new chief of the Direct Marketing Association, John Greco, swept several senior management staff out and promoted a similar number of middle managers. VPs in charge of segments & affiliates, conferences and marketing & business development were moved out,... continue reading »Black Friday Net Sales Up 30 PercentInternet Retailer reports comScore figures that show Black Friday sales grew 30 percent online, adding more than $90 million in sales compared to last year. The research firm said it expects November and December sales to exceed $15 billion.... continue reading »Amnesty Offered Spammers to Help Fix Google Hijacking VulnerabilityDiscussion monitoring site Threadwatch points to an insiders' forum where a Google representative is calling for help among the search engine optimization vendor crowd to help the search engine prevent "Google results hijacking," a vulnerability Google has that allows cheating... continue reading »Europeans Dropping Some TV, Newspaper Time for NetRevolution points to a Jupiter study of European media habits that found more than a quarter of people reducing their TV watching time in favor of spending more on the internet. For 2004, 27 percent said they were switching some... continue reading »Bofra Ad Server Exploit Went UnheraldedThe Guardian sums up the recent scare over a brief trojan infection that ad serving firm Falk experienced. While sites like The Register immediately made viewers aware of the potential that they had been exposed to the Microsoft Internet Explorer... continue reading »Transaction Waits Tolerated Less, Experienced LessRetail sites generally did fairly well over the Thanksgiving weekend, suffering through the buying spikes with an average of only five percent declines in response time, according to Internet Retailer's report on Gomez data. This comes just as Webmetrics told... continue reading »Tech Clients Lead Online AdspendCBS MarketWatch reports that more than a quarter of the fast growing online advertising business comes from technology accounts. AdZone Research reportedly found that tech firms spent $181 million in September out of a total of $696.2 spent on the... continue reading »Lycos's Anti-Spam Screensaver Diverted to Attack LycosZDNet UK reports that the Lycos Europe "Make Love Not Spam" distributed computing screensaver effort may have proved a victim of its own rather aggressive tactics. It seems one of the alleged spammers targeted by the denial of service application... continue reading »Forbes.com's Staff Revolt Works, IntelliTXT Ads CannedForbes.com's experiment with putting keyword-based sponsored links amidst editorial on its site met its end at the hands of an outraged editorial staff, according to AdWeek. The ads converted certain words in stories into hotlinks that spawn small ads when... continue reading »New Biz Search Engine to Bow from ChinaSearchEngineWatch reports that a new Chinese-owned business search engine, headed by former Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer, will launch today. The Accoona site reportedly will list more than 30 million companies and include results found both from a web crawl and... continue reading »Etailer-Threatening Patent Suit Goes to Trial this A.M.Internet Retailer reports that Amazon.com and several other online retailers haven't settled the patent case that threatens their ability to freely customize product suggestions based on customers' previous shopping habits. The suit, started by patent holding company Pinpoint, goes to... continue reading »Holiday Search Marketing Doubles Conversion RateDoubleClick reports that search engine marketing conversion rates almost doubled over those seen last year around the Thanksgiving shopping weekend. While costs per click remained about the same, DoubleClick's Performics clients saw an 85 percent rise in click traffic and... continue reading »AOL to Make More CutsCNET reports that AOL will fire another 700 employees in yet another round of layoffs in hopes of stanching further losses. The broadband and technology divisions will reportedly feel the cutbacks the hardest. The report canvasses analysts who generally seem... continue reading »Mysteriously Anemic Canadian E-Commerce ExploredeMarketer takes a stab at figuring out why it is that Canada has been so quick to adopt the internet - even being the first country to see broadband overtake dialup access - yet show such anemic e-commerce figures. Less... continue reading »Netflix Exploits Social NetworkingIn an attempt to push more movie rentals and encourage product endorsement among friends, Netflix added social network features to its website, according to ClickZ. A Netflix executive said that the firm saw social networking not so much as a... continue reading »Report: Blogs Hotting Up on Madison AvenueBusinessWeek reports on an apparently increased willingness of advertisers to seek audiences on blogs or networks of blogs. It says that one of the key factors is a belief that 11 percent of internet users are "inveterate blog readers."... continue reading »Lycos's Spam Attack Network DismantledThe well-intentioned and perhaps overly-aggressive (and quite possibly illegal) campaign by Lycos Europe to create a distributed computing network of users that would collectively execute denial of service attacks on alleged spam server sites seems to have been taken down.... continue reading »Costs Per Click Up, Shopping Weekend Distends Search SupplyMediaPost reports that search marketing prices decreased over the Black Friday weekend, indicating that the increased supply took its toll on keyword prices as marketers were off enjoying the holiday weekend, according to Fathom Online data and analysis. When they... continue reading »Click Fraud Called Rare in U.K.Adverblog points to The Financial Times' canvas of how deep the click fraud problem extends in the search engine marketing industry. According to the reporter, it's not that big a deal just yet, with fraudulent clicks spoiling a very small... continue reading »Tobaccowala: Passions & Behavior Best TargetingClickZ interviewed Rishad Tobaccowala founder of Starcom IP and Publicis Groupe's chief innovation office. Tobaccowala was recently in the news as having joined the board of behavioral targeting technology firm Revenue Science. In the interview he said that Starcom will... continue reading »Mitsubishi Throws Account into ReviewAdAge reports that Mitsubishi is putting its account into review, hiring Select Resources International to look for additional agencies to pit against incumbent Deutch's Los Angeles office. The carmaker's U.S. sales declined 25 percent this year, and Ian Beavis, its... continue reading » |