• by John Gaffney , April 2, 2003

Search, Research: Suddenly research is the hottest ticket in town. It has always been a hot ticket in this business, but over the last month I have seen new research ventures I'm sworn to secrecy about. We've all seen major research houses like Simmons introduce a new update and it seems like every ad agency in town has a proprietary research solution. But here's the deal. You can never have enough research because you can never know enough about your customer. But let's not forget there's good research, (meaning actionable research) and bad research (meaning research you can throw away). Somewhere in the middle is research you keep. So as the research flows in, and the research flows out, let's not forget quality over quantity.

Flicks: One of the things I saw at Simmons this week was a continuing serious behavioral trend toward serious movie fans. Does this mean cinema advertising is worth a look? Might be.

At the Buzzer: I'm surprised cable news channels haven't made more sponsored usage of the crawler at the bottom of the screen. In fact, I thought that's why it's been there for so long.