• Campaign Multitracking
    As pay-per-click advertising has grown, the task of tracking and managing campaigns has mushroomed in complexity, overwhelming media agencies trying to keep up with multiple campaigns by big brand clients. "Many agencies have told us that one of their biggest problems is juggling all the campaigns their clients are doing online," says Seb Bishop, chief marketing officer of Miva Inc., the performance marketing network formerly known as Find-What.com. "That has meant logging in separately to track and manage each individual campaign." To address this, Miva launched Agency Center 1.0, a tool designed to alleviate the growing pains …
  • High-Tech Comes Home
    Making a cutting-edge product truly universal means domesticating it for popular consumption. Few companies do that better than Kodak. With its Simply Pictures Web site (www.kodak.com/go/simplypictures), Kodak brings the latest in digital photography and printing into the middle-class suburban home. The site, designed by Avenue A/Razorfish, Seattle, shows a virtual home on One Kodak Lane, through which visitors can travel. Visitors to the kitchen get tips on organizing a scrapbook with layouts from craft expert Sandi Genovese of the DIY Network. In the family room, visitors learn how to create a bound digital photo album and design a "doggie …
  • On dMarc, Get Set
    Plenty of high-flying enterprises have fallen by sticking too closely to what they've already accomplished and missing chances to blaze new trails. Google seems intent, even obsessed, with avoiding this fate. Starting out as a search technology firm, it has quickly morphed into an online advertising giant now taking on all media. That's one way of explaining the search giant's acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting, a digital solutions provider for the radio industry, whose technology automates functions connected with selling, buying, and scheduling radio ads. The firm's automation software allows a potential advertiser to search for a particular …
  • Rich Media Made Easy
    Until now, rich media advertising was an activity limited to those marketers with either the money or the technical chops to internally develop sophisticated Flash-enabled campaigns. DoubleClick's latest version of Dart Motif is designed to change all that -- to make rich media advertising easily accessible to advertisers who've been left out of the party. The latest version launched last December and allows designers to convert formats with a single click by selecting among various templates of rich ads. Compatible with Firefox and Netscape 8, Dart Motif also includes user interface-based authoring tools that allow designers with no formal …
  • Strong Suits
    As Time Inc. struggles to squeeze its old media fanny into new media attire, the company's myriad print titles would be wise to emulate Sports Illustrated, which, with SI.com/Swimsuit, offered the ultimate case study on dynamic online advertising. Beyond the tawny skin and siren gazes, the site is stocked with display ads from Budweiser, Planters Peanuts, Coca-Cola's energy drink Vault, and DaimlerChrysler's Dodge brand. Visitors can stream dozens of free videos that are surrounded by pre-roll for the Honda Civic, or buy them from Apple's iTunes music store for $1.99 apiece. There's also a Kid Rock music video, "Rock …
  • Amazon Stories
    Consumers seeking a sneak peek at Amazon.com's first original series "Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher" can access preview clips of the first episode at www.amazon.com/entertainment. The clips thus far include interviews with Stephen King and Armistead Maupin, plus a live performance by Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas. The 30-minute weekly online program will begin streaming June 1. In addition to interviews with authors and artists and live musical performances, the 12-episode program will also include a surprise special delivery segment, promoting sponsor United Parcel Service. The segment will have randomly selected customers open their doors to discover a celebrity along …
  • Adcandy Still Sweet?
    Per Hoffman, founder and president of virtual agency Adcandy.com, wants to democratize the advertising business by actively soliciting input from creative types outside agency walls. Here, he gives an Adcandy state-of-the-union address as the site approaches its first birthday. OMMA contributor Larry Dobrow had a few questions for Hoffman. OMMA: Has the site and community evolved the way you intended? Hoffman: I've been using the Wright Brothers analogy a lot: It flies. It does for very little what other companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for. From a business perspective, companies want the user …
  • Cookies for Sale
    When it comes to Web advertising, small niche publishers face a quandary. Their sites attract committed audiences with the kind of high-quality demographics advertisers want. Yet their relatively tiny page-view counts have largely made them non-entities when it comes to real world advertising revenue. Kanoodle's BrightAd Cookies program seeks to help smaller publishers monetize their customer bases by "selling" their cookies. BrightAd Cookies allows publishers to generate revenue by providing advertisers access to their audience not only when they're on a site, but after they leave via targeting cookies. Once publishers sign up for the …
  • All Aboard ''BSG''
    Sci-fi fans waited decades for the next generation of the late-1970s TV series "Battlestar Galactica" to arrive. When the Sci-Fi Channel made their wish come true in January 2005, the programmer knew it would find an instant fan base. But it wanted more. Thanks to its merger into the NBC-Universal family, Sci-Fi was able to pack a lot more marketing into the show's launch. Debuting first as a miniseries event, "Battlestar Galactica" was promoted on such NBC-Uni channels as Bravo and USA Network. Now well into its second season, the show pulls in about 2.3 million viewers a week, …
  • NBC as Viral Villain
    "Lazy Sunday," an online spoof rap video created by "Saturday Night Live" players Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, is hilarious and brilliant. The dweeby duo nail the genre's absurd conventions, from the giant puffy coat to the menacing glares and crazed gesticulations, while relating the most benign activities: buying cupcakes, debating the merits of Yahoo Maps versus MapQuest and picking up Mr. Pibb and Red Vines at a convenience store. The juxtaposition of mundane leisure and hard-core hip-hop is side-splittingly hilarious. All those brand names make the online video compelling from a marketing perspective, too -- it's delicious viral …
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