• The Next Great Love Affair
    Hollywood embraces the Web as a marketing vehicle.
  • AdNetwork Focus: Fastclick
    Fastclick began serving and selling ads in September 2000. It currently serves 750 million impressions monthly and reps 5,500 websites on a nonexclusive basis. Among the network’s clients are X10, Orbitz, Qwest, and AT&T. Through Fastclick’s performance targeting, click-throughs and post-click tracking for each category and each website in the network are available. Websites and creatives that are not faring well can be taken out of a campaign’s rotation by one of two ways: either manually by an advertiser, or via an automatic optimization setting based on set CPA and/or CTR goals. Fastclick just launched a new ad …
  • The Best of the Net: AdServers
    The big online ad networks (and even some of the smaller ones) all have their own in-house ad-serving technology. But ad serving has become so lucrative that networks are now licensing out their technology to third-party clients. There are now more than a dozen ad servers that individual websites can call upon to track and serve ads. Reports are given to clients in real-time, lists can be managed, campaigns created, and more. Competitive advantages in this category center on the degrees of targeting, pricing, client base, and hosting location. bluestreakWith a new CEO, an investment from AOL, and the …
  • Best of the Net: AdNetworks
    Being the best online ad network takes more than just repping the largest number of sites. The quality of the content is a major factor, along with the number of impressions the network as a whole is serving. But the distinctions don’t end there. Perhaps most important is what resources a network has to offer an advertiser in capturing its intended audience—ad serving and targeting capabilities, along with a choice of pricing structures. Here are the tops in the field. L90 L90 serves 7 billion impressions monthly, and its lower-cost network, Zonfire, serves 3 billion. To extend its capabilities, …
  • InternetUniversity: CodeRed
    Despite the warnings, publicity, and detection systems, computer viruses still seem to be able to disrupt our ability to use the Internet seamlessly for work or other vital communications. If you’re a home user or you run a business out of your home, you probably didn’t experience much fallout from Code Red, which attacked vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s web serving software (and disrupted access here at MediaPost) in August. Keeping a home computer safe from viruses is as easy as going to a retail store or website and purchasing the latest virus utility. Most of you are probably familiar with …
  • AdNetwork 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 …
  • ClickPicks: MindShareDesign.com
    MindShareDesign.com (formerly Postmastergeneral.com) is the site of MindShare Design, a San Francisco company founded in 1996 that provides opt-in email management and delivery services. MindShare developed the PMG Service, which provides list owners with handling and delivery of their high-volume, opt-in email marketing campaigns. Under the PMG Service umbrella are PMG Standard, Pro, and—50 The PMG Service is web-based, so there is no software to install; the entire service runs on MindShare’s servers. PMG users can manage their databases and schedule deliveries all on the MindShare website. Click-through rates and tracking reporting are also …
  • FutureTool: OrbitAds
    Pop-up ads are ‘pretty distracting and offensive. They deliver a good message but there’s a better way to get the message across without upsetting surfers,’ says Brian Hunter, chief operating officer of ExitExchange. The company’s solution: OrbitAds, which don't really pop up, but pop under, appearing as full-page ads after a user leaves a website. “They convert exit traffic into valuable advertising for members,” Hunter says. OrbitAds are delivered through Windows management system software that automatically codes and serves a member’s ad after a user leaves a website. Unlike pop-up ads, OrbitAds play after a user surfs …
  • Reports from the Media Frontiers: November, 2001
    StreamingTalk about the Weather by Ken Liebeskind, MediaPost Staff Writer Whether planning a military operation or a trip to the mall, getting an up-to-the-minute weather report can be vital. Streaming weather content can be found in many places on the web, including on newspaper sites. But Weather.com and Accuweather.com are among the biggest players, drawing on their extensive resources—the Weather Channel’s cable network and the Accuweather forecasts distributed to TV and radio stations and newspapers. The sites provide “on-demand weather forecasts for any place in the world whenever you want it,” says Jay Mathieu, strategic media project manager …
  • Media for the Online World: Consider the Source
    If truth is the first casualty of war, then let us mourn the death of truth in tracking e-commerce. To be clear about who’s at war: the media are in combat with one another. In a shrinking economy, and particularly a shrinking media economy, each of the media is at war with one other for the clients’ ad dollars. Envision wild animals forced to share a drinking hole, one that is evaporating in a drought. Do you think they’re going to be nice to each other? Heck, no. It’s survival of the strongest, and meanest, and craftiest. Everyone else …
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