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March 2005
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Ameriquest Takes Account In-House, Dumps Tribal DDBMortgage firm Ameriquest let go its online agency, Tribal DDB, after hiring Brian Woods as chief marketing officer from United Online. Woods told AdAge, "I know this space very well," and that the firing of Tribal had nothing to do... continue reading »Search Execs Blame Affiliates, Point to 2nd-Tier Engines for Click FraudA canvassing of search players indicated to ClickZ that the brunt of click fraud comes from affiliate programs. A ClickDefense executive pegged the proportion at 70 percent of bad clicks. CEO Scott Boyenger said that 15 to 20 percent of... continue reading »SuperPages Canada BoughtCanada's biggest directory advertising firm, Yellow Pages Group (YPG), said it will buy SuperPages for $2.55 billion Canadian Dollars, according to Canadian Press. The purchase vastly increases YPG's markets into Western Canada and into the internet. SuperPages Canada was bought... continue reading »Legit Blogger Gains White House Press PassThe New York Times reports a blogger finally made it into the White House press corps, needling enough people to finally be granted a pass. Garrett Graff, who writes the FishbowlDC blog only made progress after several traditional media outlets... continue reading »Most Net Users Sought Online Political Information in 2004 CampaignAbout two out of five adult Americans went online in 2004 to seek information or news on political campaigns, according to a newly-released study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A total of 75 million Americans used the... continue reading »Key Microsoft Engineer Defects to GoogleeWeek reported that one of Microsoft's key operating system engineers defected to Google. Certain to reinvigorate repeatedly denied rumors that Google intends to create its own browser operating system, the move of Marc Lucovsky to Google may have more to... continue reading »Citizen Journalism Skewered by Daily ShowComedy Central's Daily Show skipped past the snarky comments often seen in traditional media concerning the growth of blogging by aiming its very pointy satire at citizen journalism. A Pointer Online item on the piece notes that very, very serious... continue reading »Small Biz Population DecreasesDM News cites infoUSA figures showing that the last year brought a decline in the number of U.S. small businesses. After growing rapidly to 11.6 million businesses at the end of 2002, the number started to decline, this last year... continue reading »Advertising.com Drops AdwareWhen AOL bought Advertising.com last summer, it started off a review process that led to the ad network's dropping of its practice of including adware-generated media as part of its pool of offerings, according to MediaPost. The move came just... continue reading »FEC Comments on Blog Regulation Taken SeriouslyRepublican Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith's recent interview comments, seemingly designed to fire a shot across the bows of (generally liberal) political blogs, reverberated through the popular press this week. The New York Times canvassed comments from various legal authorities... continue reading »Major Studio Shoots Footage for Web AdClickZ notes that Disney broke with previous industry practice, spending the effort and money to have special footage for the creative used to promote one of its major movie releases. Vin Diesel helped create web ad footage for his new... continue reading »Jupiter: One in Five Seeks Medical Word of MouthJupiter Research released figures showing that one in five online users turn to other users for advice on healthcare. The figures show that pharmaceutical marketing may be more influenced by word of mouth efforts than previously supposed. Many people have... continue reading »Viral Marketing Getting Partial Credit for Burger King RecoveryAdWeek took a long look at Burger King's viral marketing efforts to try to figure out if they work. To date, effectiveness figures have been relegated to traffic figures, such as MarketingVOX's early report of McDonald's versus Burger King site... continue reading »B-to-B Adspend Up in 2004, Especially DecemberBusiness-to-business ad spending grew almost four percent in 2004 compared to 2003, according to figures from research firms Business Information Network and TNS Media Intelligence appearing in BtoB Online. Print ad pages saw a rise of 1.4 percent, with a... continue reading »Digital Impact Declines infoUSA's Takeover BidDigital Impact rejected infoUSA's $2 per share bid for all its stock, a $81 million buyout offer, according to BtoB Online. The bid, a large premium over Digital Impact's current stock price, wasn't enough cash for the firm's board of... continue reading »Yahoo to Bow Music ServiceMusic sites and web media watchers are atwitter about Yahoo's impending launch of what it hopes to be rival to Apple's iTunes music download service. A CNET report indicates the launch has been delayed to the end of March. Yahoo... continue reading »A9 Exec InterviewedAn interview with A9's Barnaby Dorman, Amazon.com's lead developer for its local search efforts, revealed a bit more about the venture's intent and expectations. Zachary Rogers' interview shows that Amazon's ambitions remain limited to garnering revenue off of the Google... continue reading »Kids Group Targets Buzz Marketing, Trade GroupClickZ reports that a foundation geared to protecting kids from sex, violence and unfettered capitalism launched a trade media campaign attacking the new draft code of ethics put forward by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). The National Institute... continue reading »Bloggers Have Few Job ProtectionsCNET put together a brief guide to blogging for employees, concentrating on the risks that bloggers can be fired for stating their opinions online. The crux: five states offer protections for employees for actions they conduct in their own free... continue reading »Net Retail Sales Up 41 Percent for Week, Travel Sales DownInternet retail sales shot up 41 percent for the week ending February 13 compared to the same week last year, according to comScore figures reported by Internet Retailer. Sales reached $1.79 billion when sales for both online and offline retail... continue reading »Past Fraud Alleged at InfoSpacePaidContent points to a strongly-worded investigative story on the bubble days of InfoSpace done by the Seattle Times. The Times alleges that former chairmain Naveen Jain and other senior executives deliberately deceived investors and plotted to thwart securities law restrictions... continue reading »Eyeblaster Out with New 'VideoStrip'Eyeblaster announced a new rich media format variant called a VideoStrip that runs within a normal-sized Flash ad, showing an occluded video screen. Upon rollover, the ad expands to a much larger video presentation. Eyeblaster also said it launched a... continue reading »Overture Head: Microsoft Unlikely to Renew Yahoo DealAdWeek got confirmation of previous reports that Yahoo does not expect to renew its search advertising deal with Microsoft when the current contract's term ends in the middle of 2006. Yahoo's head of Overture Services said that Microsoft will likely... continue reading »Burnett Sues for Allegedly Inflated Placement DealsAdrants points to a MediaWeek story indicating the wild west of product placement may be even a bit more wild than previously supposed. Reality series creator Mark Burnett sued Madison Road, the firm credited with bringing some of the world's... continue reading »FTC Tentatively Defines Spyware, Puts Firms on Notice for Deception, OmissionAfter convening its Spyware Workshop, the Federal Trade Commission staff put together a summary report [in PDF format] indicating their own perceptions of spyware, adware and what sorts of behavior may warrant regulation and enforcement. The 62-page document discusses at... continue reading »Google: Bigger Isn't Better, R&D Focus on DivvyingGoogle's head of search quality, Peter Norvig, told a conference on semantics technology that the dominant search engine firm would not be concentrating its efforts on increasing its index size, but rather divvying up that index into discretely relevant chunks... continue reading »Coremetrics Offers Some Client Data for BenchmarkingCoremetrics launched a new service based on its clients web metrics data that will benchmark various business category's web performance on variables such as session traffic, stickiness, click rates and transaction rates, according to Internet Retailer. The LIVEmark service works... continue reading »eBay's new Kijiji Effort Reveals Skunkworks DivisionFollowing on AuctionByte's breaking the story of eBay's new classifieds unit called Kijiji, the online trade magazine notes that Kijiji was incubated in an eBay unit previously unknown to the public. The group, headed by Eskander Kazim, works independently from... continue reading »Analyst: Email Marketing PeakedForrester analyst and former big agency ad guy Jim Nail told email marketing conference goers that their medium has peaked. He cited research showing that growth in email lists has stopped and that unsubscribed consumers are unlikely to do so... continue reading »Merrill Lynch: Marketers Awakening to More Rational Media MixMerrill Lynch appears to believe the ad industry's perennial claim that - this time - it will become medium-neutral, ending its less than completely rational spending bias toward television and putting less budget behind TV upfront, according to MediaPost. These... continue reading »Majority Believes Spam Problem RecedingA Bigfoot Interactive survey, details carried by MediaPost, indicated that 57 percent perceived a reduction in the amount of spam they received in 2004 relative to 2003. Unfortunately, about the same proportion of people said they've since been infected with... continue reading »General Adspend up 10 Percent in 2004BtoB Online reports that TNS Media Intelligence released figures showing that marketers spent $141.1 billion in the U.S. in 2004, up 9.8 percent over the previous year. The internet grew the fastest, as is customary, it's growth rate reaching 21.4... continue reading »Report: Yahoo to Launch Adsense CompetitorYahoo is reportedly testing a new contextual advertising program to compete with Google's Adsense program. Rumors had started when Overture product manager Ken Rudman placed contextual ads on his own blog. Investment firm UBS even upgraded Yahoo's stock to a... continue reading »Ads Rejected by Nets, Church Turns to Blog AdsThe United Church of Christ, after having its a ads rejected by television networks for starkly emphasizing the church's acceptance of gay members, turned to the internet - and in particular a blog network - to carry its awareness campaign.... continue reading »adMarketplace Buys Behavioral Tech FirmadMarketplace, an aptly-named online ad auction firm, announced it bought tech firm AIBITS to acquire its behavioral targeting technology. Geneva-based AIBITS uses artificial intelligence algorithms to sort through behavioral data.... continue reading »Google Bans Own Pages for 'Cloaking'Giving itself a taste of its own medicine, Google is banning some of its own pages for inadvertently using a forbidden search engine optimization tactic. After being hounded by the search engine optimization community for alleged "cloaking," Google investigated the... continue reading »Spy Act Approved in Committee, Moves to Full HouseWired reports that California Representative Mary Bono's anti-spyware bill finally made it out of committee. HR29, the Spy Act, scooted into the full House after being unanimously approved. The bill, now amended so as to allow typical cookie tracking, levies... continue reading »FTC: Multi-Advertiser Emails Require DisclosureIn response to a request from the Direct Marketing Association to further define who would legally be considered an email "sender" for purposes of Can-Spam Act compliance, the Federal Trade Commission gave some further rule interpretations. The FTC said that... continue reading »Jupiter: Net Adspend to Hit $16.1 Billion in 5 YearsJupiter Research reports that only two online ad categories - automotive and travel - are both top spending categories and are predicted to be among the top growth categories in the next five years. Predicting that the online ad market... continue reading »Contextual Ads Typically Disappoint without Close ManagementWhen ClickZ asked agencies to pass judgment on contextual search media, it found the ruling to be a bit ambiguous. Contextual search can be useful, but seldom without close management and more selective use for only certain clients. And the... continue reading »WSJ Launches Adware News AppThe Wall Street Journal, one of the many large publishers that has complained loudly that adware puts non-Journal advertisers in front of its viewers, launched its own adware application. The "News Alert" program puts on users' desktops pop-up windows with... continue reading »NetRatings Still in (Narrower) LossDutch media firm VNU, owner of Nielsen measurement services and various industry trade magazines, posted increased profits for 2004, but noted that its Nielsen/NetRatings business continued to make narrowing losses on increased revenues. A PaidContent piece suggested the media giant... continue reading »Rich Media Formats ReviewedClickZ's Zach Rodgers canvassed online agencies to get the street's sense of which rich media technologies are best for particular purposes. His piece notes that all the major rich media firms have gone from niche formats to attempts to become... continue reading »Study Shows Increased Simultaneous Media Use among KidsA Kaiser Family Foundation study showing the media habits of teens revealed that they voraciously consume all forms of media, often several at the same time. "Old world" media and "new media" were used about equally, according an iMedia report... continue reading »McCain, Feingold: Regulating Blogs Idea SillyThe champions of the most recent campaign finance reform law, Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold issued a joint statement both reassuring bloggers that the law is not engineered in a way that could reasonably be applied to make blog... continue reading »Think Partnership to Buy PrimaryAdsWebSourced announced that its parent company, Think Partnership, signed an agreement to buy PrimaryAds, an affiliate marketing concern.... continue reading »Forbes.com to Launch Luxury Auto SiteAn AdWeek email reports that Forbes will launch a luxury auto site in two month's time. ForbesAutos.com, slated to appear in May, will provide search and selection options for seekers of expensive rides. Mary Butler, recently editor of Cars.com, will... continue reading »Few Celebrations for 5th Anniversary of Dot-Com CrashExecutive Summary commemorates the fifth year anniversary (that would be the "wood anniversary") of the NASDAQ's internet bubble peak. Yes, it really did reach 5,049 five years ago today.... continue reading » |