As the online ad industry continues to clean house, some advertisers are suddenly finding themselves with smaller ad budgets and less pull dollar-wise when it comes to getting placement on major websites. What's a media buyer to do? There are several options - yes, I am still optimistic that someday, someone will figure out how to buy and sell media over the web - and this do-it-yourself ad exchange model maybe worth a try. Silicon Alley-based Digitalroot - http://www.digitalroot.com - lets smaller advertisers aggregate their media buys to purchase inventory on big-name sites such as The Motley Fool, …

Today may just be the most appropriate day of the year to talk about my favorite online activity - shopping. Well, that's after email, the newswires, online news magazines and other stuff I spend most of my days on, but nevertheless... shopping is the topic. Not only because today is one of the biggest offline shopping days of the year, but because nearly 20% of Americans will shop online for Christmas gifts this year, according to a new Maritz Poll conducted by Maritz Marketing Research Inc., one of the world's largest marketing research firms. That's up 7% from …

As we reported in yesterday's MediaDailyNews, six-month-old company AdExchange is in serious trouble. The company touted its service as being the only one that linked buyers directly to inventory posted by media companies, but apparently the intended users didn't quite buy into the concept. Now, according to one source, they've gone out of business altogether and company founders are planning to go into business as an ASP solution using the technology created for AdExchange. According to another source, they're down to a dozen employees and are in discussions with investors about how to proceed. Either way, things aren't running …

When a few months ago pundits floated the idea of traditional advertisers stepping in to fill the online revenue gap left by failing dot-coms, many remained skeptical. For once, the pundits were right. AdRelevance today announced that the number of new companies advertising online has more than doubled since January - growing by 157% over the past ten months. According to the report, the number of new companies advertising online is growing at an average rate of 14% a month. Twenty-four percent (949 companies) of all advertisers in the month of January 2000 (3,963 companies) were new to …

Despite the hype, wireless skeptics are growing in numbers. Just yesterday, the Internet Advertising Report ran a story highlighting the consensus some analysts have reached - advertising won't comprise a major revenue source for wireless content providers. To strengthen the case, IAR quoted Gartner Group analyst Bob Egan, who said users will find ads too obtrusive in the mobile space. "Advertisers will see people carrying cell and phones and other messaging devices as the most qualified retail distribution for their advertising," he said. "But the simple fact is, I don't want my phone going off every two minutes with …

As the Myers Report rightly put it this morning, "Physicists continue to debate the limits of the known universe, but there appears to be no physical boundaries in sight for the media universe." Based on the October numbers from Nielsen//NetRatings, Internet penetration continues to rise, with 54% of the U.S. population having access to the Web from home. Internet access peaked in October 2000 with nearly 150 million people having access, a 32% increase over the same time last year. Moreover, October web surfers spent 23% more time online than last year, and web usage, for the first time, …

Spending on Internet advertising continued to increase in the United States in October, increasing almost eight percent from the previous month, to about 1.7 billion U.S. dollars, according to a report released Monday. America Online was the biggest spender, with two of its operations spending a total of 44 million dollars in October, according to the report from AdZone Interactive, a research firm that tracks advertising on 1,700 U.S. websites that account for 95% of all U.S. Internet advertising revenue. The top ten advertised brands spent approximately 149.5 million dollars on U.S. websites in October. America Online, …

Will this year's online holiday shopping season be as exciting as last year's? Last year, pundits predicted that this year's online holiday shopping season would start earlier. But a number of reports made it into the spotlight yesterday, leaving people in the advertising and e-tailing industries very confused. For one, Nielsen//NetRatings says the holiday shopping season has yet to begin - the week ending November 5 showed a zero percent growth over the prior week. "Last year's holiday shopping season began with a big bang right after people put away their Halloween costumes," said Sean Kaldor, VP of eCommerce …

Combating the spreading hysteria about the health of the online ad industry, Engage today released its third quarter Online Advertising Report (OAR). The report's lead finding determined that there is a strong pattern emerging of users who recently saw an online ad to those converting to a sale. For the first time, analysis demonstrates that seeing ads alone causes sales, according to the report. By measuring how quickly people convert after seeing ads, a dramatic pattern emerges. Users who more recently saw an ad have a higher propensity to convert, indicating a causal relationship between the view and the …

This week has seen some conflicting reports about the health of the online advertising industry. Notably, a CBS Marketwatch story earlier this week started off with, "Just when investors in online ad companies might have thought it couldn't get any worse, it did." The story was referring to latest announcement of disappointing results and 200 job cuts at 24/7 Media - that's 17% of its force - and an earnings warning and abrupt resignation of the CEO at Engage. Stock prices, once again, took a nose dive. Not surprisingly, Goldman Sachs and ING Barings downgraded Engage, while 24/7 …