WeatherBug, a popular ad-supported desktop PC application, is giving new meaning to the idea of consumer control over advertising. Consumers who have downloaded the desktop application will now be able to choose a single advertiser to sit on their desktops for a month without being interrupted by other offers. Previously, WeatherBug's Sponsor Select program allowed consumers to select an advertiser from among several categories, and they would view the marketer's message for a couple of days. After the two-day viewing period, consumers were placed back into a pool to receive a variety of ads across categories for the rest of the month. "We decided to give consumers complete control over their ads, instead of giving them a sponsor for a few days," says Andy Jedynak, WeatherBug's senior-VP and general manager. "Once they've selected their sponsor for a few days, all the [other] ads go away for the rest of the month." The ads, mostly rich media-enabled, link directly to an advertiser's Web page. The goal, according to WeatherBug, is to deepen the relationship between the marketer and the individual to deliver better results. At the end of the month, consumers are asked to choose another advertiser from among the WeatherBug categories. Consumers can also opt not to choose a sponsor. Those who "opt-out" will see targeted ads that integrate into content, and run-of-site display ads, and pop-under ads. Jedynak says the upgraded product will create "a clutter-free relationship between the sponsor and the person who selected them." The Gaithersburg, Md.-based company says that two-thirds of its users want to choose their own advertiser. Astra-Zeneca's Nexium, Pfizer's Benadryl, American Express, and DaimlerChrysler are among the Sponsor Select advertisers. Video Professor, a Lakewood, Co.-based marketer of instructional CD-ROMs, finds that conversion rates are better with WeatherBug ad programs than with cost-per-click campaigns. "We're able to communicate with consumers multiple times and have a few chances for them to purchase," says Walter Long, business development manager at Video Professor. Long notes that cost-per-click campaigns offer only one opportunity to convert consumers, "We're seeing much better conversions with WeatherBug," Long says, although he declined to cite specific data. ComScore Networks' comScore Media Metrix reports that WeatherBug had 16.4 million unique visitors in December. WeatherBug says it has racked up 30 million downloads since its launch in 2000.
E-mail forgery, or spoofing, is one of the toughest problems facing Internet providers and anti-spam companies today. Last week, Time Warner's America Online implemented a new authentication protocol in a bid to eradicate spoofing, a widespread practice of spammers worldwide. Spammers are able to forge other people's domain names or create false ones relatively easily because the industry-standard protocol for sending email, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), cannot specifically detect and verify a sender's domain identity. Because of this, it's relatively easy to spoof email addresses on a large or small scale. AOL's new authentication protocol, Sender Permitted From (SPF), launched last week, is billed as the largest-scale test for the protocol, which is simultaneously being considered by various standards groups such as the E-mail Service Provider Coalition. The SPF protocol prompts AOL's receiving system to take the suspected email and match it with the public registry of legitimate domain names AOL provides. The SPF system essentially asks AOL if in fact the email comes from AOL or somewhere else. If no match is made, the system rejects the email. "All AOL users will be contained in the DNS (Domain Name System) registry database," says Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman. "The [matching process] is done at the system administrator level, so it's a totally transparent effort as far as the end-user is concerned." Graham adds that spoofing is a problem for all Internet Service Providers, because ISP domain names are frequently ripped off by spammers. He says that while spoofing email addresses is relatively easy to get away with, duplicating other users' IP addresses--which is what would have to happen for a spam message to get through the SPF system--is a complex action that only mega-spammers could pull off. AOL maintains that if the SPF protocol is adopted on a wide scale, it would virtually eradicate small-time spoofing. If the trial run proves successful, email servers and individual email address owners would effectively be protected from being falsely accused of email fraud. The endorsement of the protocol by AOL, which remains the world's largest ISP with 33 million members, could lead to its implementation by other major email providers. The trial's success would be a crucial step toward the development of email verification standard. SPF is currently one of several email authentication protocols that are either being tested or are in development. Yahoo!, The Anti-Spam Research Group, the Internet Research Task Force, and the E-mail Service Provider Coalition are all involved in similar projects. "You couldn't ask for a better testing ground than AOL," says Bill McCloskey, Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, and author of MediaPost's E-mail Insider. "If it does hold up, SPF could become the standard anti-spoofing technology. While there are several standards vying for attention, AOL is the first to adopt this technology on a wide scale." The development of these authenticated protocols indicates that the idea of filtering spam messages is running out of steam," says Jim Nail, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. "Spammers are just throwing more volume at these filters," he adds. "Perhaps spam filters are no longer the right solution." If this is true, the task of developing and testing new technology protocols is more important than ever.