I knew it was too good to be true. As excited as I was about the useful content at Web Marketing 2000 in New Orleans last week, this week's granddaddy of all online advertising conferences - @d:Tech - is back to the same format we should all be used to. I did, however, find something on the trade show floor late yesterday night that made me actually say that most childish phrase out loud - "This is SO COOL!" The company in question is Radical Communication, formerly RadicalMail, which yesterday launched the first of its kind "Buy Within …

I take it back... A few months ago, when I said industry organizations do more talking than doing, someone must have been listening. Yesterday, the Wireless Advertising Association (WAA) board of directors actually released news of their first accomplishment - the Privacy and Spam Recommended Guidelines. The guidelines are intended for the WAA members and are based on the premise that wireless push advertising should only be sent to customers who have asked for it. According to the release, the following voluntary guidelines define privacy and spam issues and set forth the following general principles: - WAA …

As you know, yesterday, AdRelevance released their newest intelligence report, which found that despite full banner popularity, other ad formats account for the majority of online impressions (63%) and garner greater exposure. It's worth mentioning that AdRelevance also showed that all industries have different technological needs when it comes to animation. Generally speaking, every industry pundit out there is recommending the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (KISS) philosophy when it comes to online ads, and it looks like advertisers are listening. As the report authors said, it appears that while sites are making efforts to accommodate newer ad technologies …

Although 80% of advertisers use the full banner in online campaigns, other ad formats account for a majority of impressions and garner far greater exposure on the web, according to a report released today by AdRelevance. Buttons (short, micro, medium and tall) and different sized banners (half, short and vertical) collectively make up 63% of all online ad impressions, while standard banners account for only 37%, the report says. Though the full banner accounts for the largest number of ads per company (18.3 on average), it garners far less exposure than other ad types, when measuring impressions per …

It's not often you hear helpful advice at an industry conference, but Web Marketing 2000 Day 4 surprised me. Basic as it may be, considering how often we forget the basics in the Internet age, this is worth highlighting. The credit goes to i-frontier's Brad Aronson, who, in an hour or so, outlined some basic steps of planning an online campaign. First and foremost, he said, be prepared - if your deadline is ASAP, you're not going to get the best deal. When it comes to ad model selection, he said, banners are best if you have a …

Hello from New Orleans. I'm here for the last two days of Thunder Lizard's Web Marketing 2000 show. Today and tomorrow will focus on online advertising (rather than marketing in general) so watch for my reports in the upcoming issues. But for now, if you decided to play it safe and avoid New Orleans' famous Bourbon Street on Halloween (like myself) - here's some highlights we missed. On the first day of the show, which started Monday, according to Adele Bienvenu from Online Ads Discussion List (which does a good job reporting live from tradeshows), focused on testing. She …

If you're worried about the speed at which your target audience connects to the Internet (with regard to rich, streaming and other bulky media), here's some good news. The number of high-speed Internet hookups in the US rose 57% in the first six months of this year and the rural subscriber rate is rising fast. According to the Federal Communications Commission, by June 30, about 4.3 million homes and small businesses subscribed to high-speed Internet service, up from 2.8 million at the end of 1999. High-speed service was available in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto …

Today, roughly 127 million U.S. adults use the Internet, up from 108 million in 1998. Eighty-six million U.S. adults shop on the Internet, and 58 million users bought something online within the past three months. It is also estimated that this year's online holiday revenues will reach $19.5 billion worldwide, an 85% increase over last year. The typical Internet user might not be as young or as male as we've been led to believe, according to a report released yesterday by the Gartner Group. Researchers found that the average web user is 41 years old, earns about $65,000 a …

This newsletter is not necessarily a recommendation, but rather a heads-up. The hype about email marketing is showing no signs of subsiding and today, another provider made an announcement about unveiling its new Web-Enabled Email Marketing Software. CrossTownTraffic, an Ohio-based marketing services firm, has unveiled its new, Web-enabled email marketing software GreenLight, which is a permission-based email marketing system that, according to company officials, is fully customizable and offers messages in a Web page format. Chris Camp, general manager of CrossTownTraffic, says GreenLight is designed to help cut through the clutter. Much like every other email marketing system …

I've lamented the inaccuracies of measuring Internet ad spending in the past, and I'm surely not alone in my frustration. The range of web ad spending totals for the first half of 2000 is, to say the least, confusing - from IDC's $2.4 billion, to the IAB's $4.1 billion, to AdZone's $6.3 billion - so what's a media buyer to do? How do you figure out the average CPMs? For 2000, AdKnowledge estimates the current average CPM to be about $34, which to me seems unreasonably high. I'm not alone. eMarketer recently examined all of the above predictions …