Online ad targeting firm Poindexter Systems said it hired away Amazon.com's chief scientist, Andreas Weigend, according to AdWeek. Weigend was behind Amazon's predictive algorithm that greets Amazon visitors with product recommendations based on their previous behaviors. Poindexter said last fall,...
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Following in the footsteps of other industry groups, the Mobile Marketing Association plans to release a set of best practices for wireless marketing, according to a report on ClickZ. The group will work this year to release guidelines before 2006,...
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Major search firm WebSourced's parent company CGI Holdings said it bought an online personals outfit and a web design firm, according to LocalTechWire. Personals Plus went for $2.26 million, plus about the same value of CGI stock, roughly 425,000 shares....
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DM News published a case study of a consumer brand - Wrangler - that integrated a survey of a web-based panel into its ongoing product and marketing development. Every couple months, Wrangler sends out an "assignment" to its 100 16-...
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As the internet becomes a better and better option for drug marketers and the federal government loosens rules regulating direct-to-consumer drug advertising on TV, magazines have suffered greatly, according to Mediapost. A NOP World Health study measuring consumers' awareness of...
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Hershey's made a call to avoid generic Spanish, employing a term known mostly to Mexicans and slightly confusing to other Latin American consumers. It started a campaign pushing its cajeta flavoring, known in many countries as dulce de leche. The...
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The AP profiled husband and wife team Mena and Ben Trott, the founders of blog software maker Six Apart. The firm, until recently staffed by only six souls, has seven million users. The piece shows how the Trotts benefited from...
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Mediapost reports that digital video recorder users turn out to be "voracious" media users, citing a Knowledge Networks survey indicating DVR users consume media at a much higher rate than average people. The study showed that they spend time reading...
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ClickZ reports that Lycos is about to launch a meta-dating site, Lycos Dating Search, where users can search through multiple dating systems at once to try finding a more appropriate person. The service will use a paid inclusion revenue model,...
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In a sign of the times, Lands' End will close one of its call centers, according to Internet Retailer, reflecting the higher percentage of its business that is now transacted purely online. Web sales have increased to about $511 million...
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Popular blogger Jason Kottke quit his day job to focus on his site, but instead of trying to sell ads, he is asking readers to make donations, according to Wired. Reflecting the less commercial culture evident in the tone and...
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Following hard on the announcement earlier this week of a new web analytics trade group, the Direct Marketing Association announced it had renamed a venerable committee of its own the "Analytics Council." Formerly the "Research Council," the DMA said the...
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Ad executives Shona Seifert and Thomas Early were both found guilty by a jury in New York City yesterday for conspiring at Ogilvy & Mather to fake timesheets on a federal government account. Seifert had since moved to become president...
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AdWeek reports that the Interactive Advertising Bureau released figures showing that online advertisers spent $9.6 billion in 2004, up about a third. The data were based on a survey of just 15 sites. Q4 spending reached a record $2.7 billion,...
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