• Dispatches: It's Not All Bad
    Lately it seems like there's very little good news generated by the online advertising industry. "The industry is in a recession." "Layoffs abound." With statements such as these polluting headline after headline, I'm almost afraid to open my inbox every morning for fear of more bad news. Well, here is some good news for a change. First off, start-ups are infamous for their way of spending money in the past, but now it looks like they've finally changed their ways. According to the latest findings of Launch Pad, a San Francisco-based high-tech marketing consulting firm, and Blanc & Otus, …
  • Clickpicks: SearchEngineWatch.com
    You can find absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about search engines on SearchEngineWatch.com. The information is divided into categories, and there is even a pay section of the site that provides members with additional info. The free portions of the site, however, are quite full of information and are very useful on their own. The Search Engine Submission Tips section explains how search engines find and rank web pages, with an emphasis on what webmasters can do to improve how search engines list their websites. This is the section of the site that is most important …
  • Research Behind the Numbers: Email Call
    A timely Forrester Research Brief points out that rising consumer fear about mail safety puts direct mail in jeopardy. It says that consumers are increasingly uneasy about opening mail in light of the postmaster general's announcement that anthrax bacteria could taint sealed postal mail. To compensate for consumer apprehension about the mail, says Forrester, marketers should consider using digital marketing to accomplish their business goals, especially with the onset of the holiday shopping season. And, at a time when direct mail is undergoing some frightening prospects, email marketing is emerging as a viable alternative. Forrester and other independent …
  • Forecast 2002 Special Issue
    Push came to shove at the W Hotel in Manhattan on October 25th, where MEDIA Magazine had assembled 100 top media professionals to grapple with the most intractable--and chronic--issues impeding the progress of online advertising. Can't we just all get along? It was hard work. As the daylong conference moderator, I came with a sword but ultimately went looking for consensus. MEDIA Maga - < had imposed on each of the five group leaders and their panels an opening resolve that took a bold position on the topic at hand. For "Branding vs. Direct," we wanted to know whether …
  • Ad Network Focus: Commission Junction
    There are three letters that send many people in this industry into a tizzy: C-P-A. CPA stands for cost-per-action and is just another way to define affiliate marketing. CPA is not the most loved and admired pricing form for publishers, since it places more responsibility, and more importantly, greater risk on the publishers (they don’t get paid unless the advertiser gets a lead). Commission Junction (www.cj.com), a network founded in 1998 by Lex Sisney and Per Pettersen, focuses entirely on this pricing structure. Advertisers contact CJ, with hopes of driving traffic to their website. They place their creative in …
  • Cool, Edgy, Artistic Absolut
    While media pundits spend their time delighting in the downward spiral of electronic revenues, traditional companies such as American Express, Coca-Cola, BMW, Kmart, and Absolut have been quietly making their move—colonizing and conquering cyberspace. Whether it’s the edgy brand installations of Absolut Vodka, creating buzz among the tech-set, or Kmart’s 21st century Bluelight.com website which shouts “Attention All Shoppers!” to middle America, successful offline companies have been busy acquiring online real estate. But more than merely establishing a web presence, these top international corporations have demonstrated remarkable visionary zeal by creating symbiotic relationships that blur the lines between online …
  • "Best of the Net"
    Just what, exactly, do we mean by “Best of the Net”? We think you know. The pages of this month's issue are populated with the companies and technologies we’re all coming to accept as the foundation of the online medium. More than merely survivors, these players dominate the field—in some cases emerging as the industry standard (catchy title for a magazine). How did we winnow dozens of candidates in each category down to the final three or four? By a multi-stage process that began with MEDIA Magazine’s crusty editorial board, moved through an online survey of savvy users of MediaPost.com, …
  • Research Behind the Numbers: Sept.11
    A report by the Pew Research Center concluded that the Internet was not a primary resource for news or outreach for most Americans immediately after the terror attacks, but it was a helpful supplement through the use of email and instant messaging, and as a news source. Americans, including Internet users, relied mostly on TV for their news, but the phone primarily for their immediate communication needs. [A follow-up Harris poll found that two weeks after the attacks, the number of wired Americans logging onto news sites had more than doubled.] Though 81 percent of all Americans say they …
  • The Internet Bubble: Those Were the Days
    Prodigy… PointCast… The Merc Center… Netscape… Softbank… Saying those words is like naming the Shades of Elysium as they come forward to speak to Aeneas on his journey to the Underworld. Great warriors of a mythical world covered by oceans of time. When the very earliest advertising appeared online back in 1993 on proprietary services like Prodigy and CompuServe, no one took much notice at all. Most of the advertising world didn’t know what “online” even meant. Sometimes when I talk about online media buying I feel like Dana Carvey’s “angry old man” character from his days on …
  • Research Behind the Numbers: iMarketing
    A recent report from Jupiter Media Metrix predicted that online ad spending in the United States will increase only 5 percent in 2001, but it will rebound and grow at a compound rate of 22 percent over the next five years, reaching a total of more than $15 billion by 2006. During the same time period, though, Jupiter says that spending on digital marketing initiatives will surpass that of advertising and reach more than $19 billion. According to Jupiter analysts, web publishers must diversify advertising and marketing opportunities beyond measured media to achieve marketing goals. Jupiter points out that …
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