A new Forrester Research study is causing quite a stir in the industry this week - it suggests that banner ads actually do work for some types of products, and have no effect whatsoever for other types of products in terms of driving short-term sales. Imagine that! According to Forrester, when people were exposed to banner ads for "impulse food products" - snacks, candy, soda - product sales increased by 19%. And, there's a direct connection between frequency and effectiveness. Sales went up once people were exposed to an impulse food product banner at least seven times. …

Why is it that whenever a company is not doing well, the first thing they do is cut the marketing budget? Is that really the way to go? What about the famous motto of Gert Boyle, Columbia Sportswear's founder: "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!" Anyone would agree that in the recent past dot-coms have thrown way too many ad dollars to the wind simply because, well, they had money to burn. But the moment things aren't going well, those ad dollars get locked up in a safe never to be seen again. Just …

In the world of Internet metrics, the Priceline Grocery and Gasoline services, which the company closed recently due to financial problems within their supplier WebHouse, were success stories. They were the top 2 services visitors used on the site after the homepage. In August, Priceline Groceries attracted 2.8 million unique visitors while Priceline Gasoline, which only launched in June, had 1.7 million unique visitors. By comparison, none of the other Priceline services was able to attract more than 560,000 unique visitors. Priceline Groceries, with a reach of 3.3%, outperformed such sites as abcnews.com, nytimes.com, mtv.com and sony.com. Priceline Gasoline garnered …

Here's another term to add to your corkboard or dust off in your memory: Message Association. Though unfortunately, the term is nearly forgotten in the online advertising world, 'message association' refers to the proportion of people who can match a given message with an advertiser. For example - can they match "Just do it" with Nike or "Drivers Wanted" with Volkswagen? Probably, but can they match your message with your product? It turns out that advertising online can actually help in this scenario. The latest research from Dynamic Logic says online banner advertising lifts message association by 12% on average. …

With all the hot water Firestone is in lately, you'd think they would be running tons of traditional media ads to stifle the panic. At least that's what I expected to happen a long time ago. Well, they chose a slightly different route, which in some sense means good news for us online advertisers. According to the latest numbers from AdRelevance, Ford Motor Company's recall banner ad is currently the number one banner on the Internet. Led by the single ad, Ford quickly ascended the charts to become the 20th ranked online ad spender, AdRelevance says, joining the …

To welcome us all back from the long holiday weekend, Media Metrix today announced the top 10 newcomer websites to its August 2000 U.S. syndicated audience ratings, and it's clear that if older Americans are your target audience, trying to reach them online is a gamble. According to the report, Americans age 50 and older are strongly represented among cash-prize and sweepstakes sites. For example, DineroReal.com, a promotional sweepstakes site, became the first Spanish-language site to rank as a Media Metrix top newcomer. Although none of the newcomers conducted online banner- advertising campaigns in August, Media Metrix says …

Email is the most popular online activity - every online marketer knows that. According to Jupiter, email is used by 96% of online users, and NetValue reports that, on average, U.S. users sent and received 75 emails this July. That must have been the thinking behind DoubleClick's announcement last week of an impending acquisition of NetCreations for $191 million. However, according to the latest numbers from the IAB, the percentage of email media buys went down from 3% of total online ad revenues in Q1 of 2000 to 2% in Q2. When asked if all the hype associated …

We all know the teen market is extremely attractive to advertisers. Now, a Teen.com survey, biased as it may or may not be, may offer some incentive for spending more on advertising to teens online. That's simply because the Internet has become the key component to teenagers' lives and it is imperative for them to have access at home, the survey says. Of 4,491 Teen.com visitors surveyed, 86% use the Internet from home. Additionally, according to the survey, 57% influenced their parents on which computer brands to buy and 52% have more than one computer in the home. …

This may be one of the first of its kind. NetZero, one of the leading ad-supported Internet access providers, has launched a program it claims will - ready for this? - guarantee a 33% percent increase in your site traffic. The 33% increase in site traffic guarantee is subject to restrictions, but will apply to campaigns from certain new advertisers that begin between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2000. If the increase is not realized during that period, NetZero will give the advertiser an additional 33% of purchased impressions spread over the following month. Sound risky? How can a …

Traffic to online trading sites decreases despite upswing in Web banking and growing interest in business/financial information. Women and high-income visitors abandon online trading sites during stock market downturn. The above is an introduction to the bleak Jupiter report, due for release later today, which found that due to the April stock market shock, the number of visitors to online trading sites during the second quarter of 2000 decreased nearly 20%, despite an overall growth (11%) in business/finance traffic. The number of women and high-income Web users on these sites has decreased 38% and 27% respectively. Additionally, online- …