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February 2005
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IAB Replaces Four BoardmembersThe IAB named four new people to its board of directors, according to AdWeek. Ask Jeeves replaced Bill Daugherty with its Jim Diaz, and representatives from Terra Lycos, SportsLine.com and Autobytel were replaced with eBay's Gary Dillabough, Advertising.com's Scott Ferber... continue reading »Match.com Bows $25 Million CampaignAdWeek reports that Match.com will launch a $25 million campaign designed to reposition the brand again, this time in response to inroad made by new competitor eHarmony.com. Hanft Unlimited, the agency responsible for the campaign, became Match.com's AOR this week... continue reading »Marketers Put High Priority on Agencies with Tech SkillsKate Maddox interviewed people in tech firms who recently chose ad agencies, looking for what qualities they seek and appreciate after the account win. The biggest trend she perceived was an appreciation for technical skills that allowed complicated and time-sensitive... continue reading »Paid Search Growth to Slow RapidlyeMarketer published a mélange of statistics about paid search, showing the firms predictions that, after 2004's 51 percent growth, the industry segment will grow only 23 percent in 2005 and 18 percent in 2006. Also of interest are survey results... continue reading »VW Ad Makers Swear Ad Wasn't for DistributionReuters reports that Dan Brooks and Lee Ford, the "Dan and Lee" that took credit for the VW viral ad that involved a suicide bomber, signed sworn statements that they created the ad and had not intended to distribute it.... continue reading »Elliott: 'Year of Rich Media' Never to ComeIn his farewell column for MediaPost, Nate Elliott writes in his Rich Media Insider that "there will never be a 'year of rich media,'" putting the much-ballyhooed creative forms into perspective. The $1.3 billion that Elliott's research firm attributes to... continue reading »MSN to Launch New Search with Major MediaMicrosoft indicated it will switch over its main search engine site to its own back-end system today from Yahoo's, also launching a major media campaign to promote its own search technology. MSN officials said it would be bigger than even... continue reading »Google Dominates in 'One Engine' PreferenceA survey of search engine users conducted from September to November 2004 found that seven out of eight respondents indicated they would pick Google if they had to choose just one search engine. The survey was conducted before MSN's new... continue reading »Spam Rise or Fall Depends on Your DefinitionDifferent studies are showing contradictory trends in the amount of spam received by email users, the latest being Postini's finding that spam represents between 75 and 80 percent of all mail. The New York Times today published a story that... continue reading »Ford: 1 in 11 Cars Sold through Web LeadsFord indicated that one in every 11 cars it sold came through web leads in 2004. The FordDirect division, which started only in 2000 with a few dealerships in Jersey, now extends over 3,900 Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers in... continue reading »U.K. SEM Firm Comes to New WorldU.K. search agency Greenlight is opening a New York office, according to Revolution. The new American division, to be initially headed by firm CEO Warren Cowan, will focus on the online retail segment. Greenlight manages accounts for Hotels.com and Camelot.... continue reading »DM'ers Warily Test Email Marketing WatersDM News reports that more and more direct mail list managers are dabbling with online lead generation, particularly in email marketing. List brokers and others in the industry have been wary of the new medium, as its has been somewhat... continue reading »Google Global Revs Increase FastestSearchEngineLowdown points out a BusinessWeek story showing that Google's international revenues are growing much faster than the domestic business. It now accounts for 35 percent of the revenues, up from 29 percent in the same quarter last year. That should... continue reading »Most Fail to Maximize Email DeliveryJupiter Research reports that more than half of email marketers fail to check whether or not users are receiving their mass communications. Fully 54 percent report that they don't audit their emailings to diagnose delivery issues, except after a campaign... continue reading »IOs Engineered to Avoid Co-Reg BugaboosA MarketingProfs column explains the pitfalls of co-registration deals - where companies build their own email lists through other lists that offer incentives to get subscribers to opt into the marketer's email program. Of course, with this sort of deal,... continue reading »Google Sees 29 Percent Growth over Last QuarterGoogle reported another blow-out-the-estimates quarter, growing 28 percent over the previous quarter, a growth rate about one and a half times the size of Yahoo's. Compared to the year before, Google's profits rose by about seven times to $204 million... continue reading »Google, Ironically, Starts Affiliate ProgramGoogle, which recently blew a large whole in affiliate revenues by nixing all but one affiliate program for each search term, started its own referral program, according to SearchEngineWatch, paying $20 for each new publisher signed up. Currently, the program... continue reading »Third Major Net Ad Conference Slotted for Same WeekThe online marketing conference market is hotting up, with a train wreck of a week in store for New York City's Advertising Week. MediaPost's new OMMA conference was already scheduled for the week, running over the toes of long-time player... continue reading »Lincoln Looks for Viral Harmonic with Superbowl SpotExploiting an increasingly popular tactic to extend the value (and perhaps justify the cost) of a Superbowl spot, Ford's Lincoln division will launch three web-only spots that will run in parallel with the big TV event, continuing the storyline, according... continue reading »NYT: Our Free vs. Paid Strategy is DeliberateAn interview with The New York Times's Martin Niesenholtz shows a deliberate ambivalence in pursuing both broad reach advertising and paid content revenue streams. Niesenholtz points to the cyclical nature of the ad markets and notes that having an alternative... continue reading »2005 Sees Good Net Retail GrowthFor the first full measured week of 2005, the week ending January 9, online retail sales grew an auspicious 23 percent to $1.14 billion, according to comScore figures. That compares to a general retail rise reported by ShopperTrak of 12.5... continue reading »Yahoo Japan Provides Blogging, not Just BlogsYahoo's Japan division, mostly owned by Softbank, released a new blogging engine for users stealing a March on Yahoo's flagship U.S. property. Yahoo's main portal has been on the cutting edge of providing good access via its portal to blog... continue reading »Burst CEO Interviewed on Anti-Spyware CampaigniMedia interviewed Burst's Jarvis Coffin on his firm's PSA campaign to help viewers and publishers deal with spyware. The conversation rambles across the differences between adware and spyware - both theoretical and practical. Coffin notes that the interests of web... continue reading »Ad Groups Object to FCC's Limits on Web Addresses in Kids AdsThree major advertising trade groups asked regulators to reconsider limits the Federal Communications Commission put in place on advertising to kids, according to MediaPost. The FCC previously redefined "commercial matter" to include house ads promoting content from publishers and broadcasters.... continue reading »Amazon Offers Free Shipping Memberships in Bid for LoyaltyIn yet another innovative move by Amazon.com in the shipping arena, the e-commerce giant will offer an annual fee based arrangement allowing buyers to pay $79 per year for unlimited free two-day shipping, according to Internet Retailer. Currently, Amazon.com offers... continue reading »Yahoo Launches Contextual SearchYahoo launched a new search tool that allows users to narrow searches based on the content they happen to be viewing at the time, providing a contextual targeting of sorts. SearchEngineWatch reviewed the new feature, noting a few rough spots,... continue reading »MSN Search Engine Reviewed with Mixed MarksSearchEngineLowdown points to a USAToday review of the new MSN search engine, which gives it good marks for effort, but criticized the persnicketiness of its syntax requirements. Many searches are "canned," in that Microsoft provides results not so much from... continue reading »TNS: Adspend to Grow 5.1 Percent, 11 Percent on WebTNS Media Intelligence/CMR predicted that the coming year will see a 5.1 percent increase in ad billings across media. That's about half the growth seen in 2004, according to BtoB Online. The second half of 2005 should see the lowest... continue reading »Spyware Declines, May Have PeakedEarthlink said that scans of its users' computers revealed many "spyware" installations, according to AdWeek, but this third quarterly installment continues to lump many things, such as tracking cookies, into the category and suggest misleadingly that the problem is worsening... continue reading »Spy Act Threat to Be Neutralized with Cookie ExceptionThe committee shepherding the much-feared Spy Act bill, which would have thrown out the tracking cookie baby with the spyware bathwater, will rewrite the potential law so as to exempt all forms of cookies, according to MediaPost. In its original... continue reading »Fathom: Keyword Prices Fall After DecemberA longitudinal keyword price tracking study by Fathom Online showed a three percent fall in the costs per click, according to MediaPost, reflecting what is probably the normalization of rates after an inflating holiday shopping season. The wireless category saw... continue reading »PPC Network Gives Advertisers Category ChoicesIn what might be part of a trend toward secondary pay-per-click networks looking to compete based on better advertiser control over ad placements, 7Search.com announced a program where PPC advertisers can define which categories of sites should run their ads.... continue reading »IAB to Boost Lobbying EffortsClickZ reports that the Interactive Advertising Bureau will create a policy and lobbying arm to address issues such as spyware, privacy and other issues requiring market and legislative education. To date, the IAB, controlled for the most part by large... continue reading »Penn Media Converts E-zines to BlogsPenn Media recharacterized its 50 e-zine publications as blogs in hopes of attracting more advertising. Contracting with Pheedo to provide RSS and blog advertising services, Penn Media is moving from a push-only advertising model to incorporating "pull" content, such as... continue reading »eMarketer: Wireless to Rise, Fall, Even OutA new eMarketer report on wireless marketing paints three potential scenarios, the most optimistic of them showing mobile marketing failing to gain even a tenth of the marketing dollars five years from now that the internet currently enjoys today. The... continue reading »DoubleClick: Executive Golden Parachutes Reflected in Q1's ForecastsIn a very unusual note for an earnings outlook, DoubleClick - in the midst of reporting decent revenues and profits for the last quarter of 2004 - told investors that it had already baked into its Q1 2005 estimates the... continue reading »comScore Buys Still Another Survey FirmClickZ reports that comScore acquired still another survey company, this one a large Canadian firm, SurveySite. The Toronto-based company employs 50, servicing very large U.S. consumer brands such as P&G and Dell. Last summer, comScore bought Q2 Brand Intelligence. Altogether... continue reading »Everyone Now an Online Marketer, Even Superbowl AdvertisersTaking one in every 25 marketing dollars might not have been enough to grant the internet "mainstream" status, but The New York Times reports that the medium may have come of age now that Superbowl advertisers, those cleverest of marketers,... continue reading »Ogilvy Staffs Digital Innovation GroupOgilvyInteractive launched a small internal group called the Digital Innovation Group that will deal with emerging interactive technologies and media. Headed by Maria Mandel, a former director of DraftDigital's interactive services, the group will consult with other Ogilvy units on... continue reading »Online Adspend Pegged to Hit 7.4 Percent in 2009Merrill Lynch estimates that online ads will account for 4.6 percent of adspend in 2005, up from 3.7 percent in 2004, according to a MediaPost report. Due particularly to increased forecasts for non-search online media, Merrill Lynch upped its earlier... continue reading »Internet Ads to Eat More Marketing ShareeMarketer collected a bevy of statistics showing the general picture of online adspend growth. It predicts 4.2 percent of adspend will go to the internet, just about where Merrill Lynch estimates had been until they revised them upward recently to... continue reading »Spam Absent from DMA Ethics ReferralsThe Direct Marketing Association's ethics committee forwarded four internally-policed cases to government authorities, according to DM News. The four members referred to various authorities involved misleading offers or noncompliant telemarketing practices. None involved spam. The DMA has in the past... continue reading »Amazon Growth Big, SlowingAmazon.com reported financial results showing 26 percent sales growth in 2004 when taking into account currency adjustments, a figure that disappointed some analysts. International sales grew fastest (33 percent taking out the currency exchange effects). The company reported a profit... continue reading »Ohio Toughens Spam PenaltiesOhio enacted a new anti-spam law that makes illegal a wide variety of activities common among spammer, including falsifying routing information and using unauthorized access to computers to send spam, according to DM News. The law gives prosecutors the ability... continue reading »Analyst: Search Marketing Will Exceed $23 Billion in 2010SearchEngineLowdown points to a breakdown of Piper Jaffray analyst figures showing the search engine marketing field growing to $10 billion in 2006, then growing 35 percent in 2007, 20 percent in 2008, 22 percent in 2009 and 16 percent by... continue reading »Hitwise Shows Evidence of Viral EffectHitwise reports that its monitoring of a Tide an ad-supported viral campaign - where visitors to a special website can sign up for free samples and recommend the site to friends - increased Tide.com's share of visits by a factor... continue reading »Mamma.com Intros Click Auction ModelMamma.com announced it added a new auction function to the flat rate pay-per-click media sales offered by the meta-search engine, according to DM News. Also announced were interface improvements, a keyword suggestion tool and a bid estimator.... continue reading »Ask Jeeves to Buy BloglinesSearch engine Ask Jeeves will announce today or tomorrow that it acquired blog aggregation service Bloglines, according to Napsterization.com. Ask Jeeves officials did say it would make an announcement of some sort today. Bloglines collects blog content and, among other... continue reading »States Persist on Net Sales Taxes, This Time a Voluntary SortRecognizing they don't have the right to tax interstate commerce, 40 states are trying a different angle; they're setting up a voluntary system in which states that sign up will ask businesses to opt into taxing their customers. That arguably... continue reading » |