Online Media Less Influential for Many Purchase Decisions

eMarketer reports that BIGresearch found that online media aren't as influential as some non-digital media. A survey of 14,000 people found that they generally reported word-of-mouth and broadcast TV as more of an influencer on their purchase decisions, although there... continue reading »

Firefox Share Up 22 Percent Largely at IE's Expense

The marketshare of the Firefox browser went up 22 percent between the beginning of last month and the middle of this month, according to Silicon.com, referencing WebSideStory statistics. Firefox usage went up to 4.78 percent, an increase of 0.88 percent... continue reading »

Ad Network Offers Residuals to Publishers to Reduce Cannibalization Risk

adMarketplace, a contextual ad network, announced it devised a system geared to answering the fears of publishers in its network that participating in the aggregate network might cannibalize their own ad sales. adMarketplace is offering to give publishers ongoing residuals,... continue reading »

Website Botches Huge Catalog DM Campaign

The story behind Eziba.com's rapid, and apparently temporary demise came out in the New York Times today, revealing that the website's failure in its foray into catalog marketing was caused by a "colossal" marketing mistake: it had the catalogs sent... continue reading »

Study: Manufacturers to Catch Up with Online Spending

Manufacturers will start catching up in terms of the proportion of their marketing efforts dedicated to online media, according to a new SVM E-Business Solutions study reported in ClickZ. With eight our of nine companies surveyed having stale websites created... continue reading »

Viewers Confuse Ads, Search Results

A new Pew study showed that average people sometimes confuse search results and the paid ads that appear near them, according to Wired. Only two out of five people seem to have noticed the "sponsored links" labels on ads, and... continue reading »

Google About to Open Up Targeting Controls to Advertisers

Silicon Valley Watcher reported that Google is about to release to advertisers a great deal of control over its vast targeting system for AdWords and AdSense. Google is to release the application programming interface (API), according to unnamed sources, which... continue reading »

Fickle Friendster Biz Questioned

The New York Times reviewed the business situation of social network firm Friendster, breaking out of the where-is-the-revenue-stream cliché story angle and marshalling sources that generally blame Friendster management for being a more localized failure - so far. Common criticisms... continue reading »

GM Confirms Teaser Campaign Thunder Stolen

Update: GM confirmed that a few visitors to its teaser campaign's website did indeed "crack the code" by finding the punch line sentence within the code of a Flash file. "We expected it to be solved, we just didn't expect... continue reading »

Venerable Firm AdWare Abandons Name Tainted by Others

As expected, ValueClick's massive agency-side ad trafficking software firm AdWare Systems will change its name, skittering away from negative associations brought on by the increasingly common use of "adware" to mean spyware and other software gunk that surreptitiously makes its... continue reading »

Tougher Spam Penalties Pushed in Georgia

Anti-spam measures make for good politics, and an increasing number of states are adding to the list of spam no-nos, as well as adding stiffer fines and penalties than can be found in the federal Can-Spam Act. According to DM... continue reading »

Web-to-Store Purchasers Report More Activity

Internet Retailer reports that a shopLocal.com study showed that 70 percent of people who find items online only to purchase them offline say they are doing this more often than they used to. About half say they will do it... continue reading »