Marketing bloggers gave Volvo relatively poor marks for its recent deal with MSN Spaces to sponsor the blog community. Not surprisingly, the industry wags liked the idea of the auto manufacturer engaging in blog advertising, but they noted that MSN's blog platform has a high proportion of largely empty blogs. In essence, Volvo had a good idea, but its instinct to go with the large, well-known brand vendor may have been a mistake. Separately, ClickZ's Zachary Rogers put together a comprehensive run-down of Volvo's relatively innovative marketing tactics.

The review includes items ranging from one of the very first banner ads on the internet to more recent ploys, such as sending a contest winner into space (how safe can that be?).

Nowadays the automaker is using services such as Intelliseek to help measure and manage its word of mouth buzz online.