• A Few Internet Marketing Predictions for 2011
    Internet marketing will be regulated by 2015, and there will be more than $250 billion in Internet marketing spending worldwide. Those are a few of the predictions I received in my email inbox Tuesday morning, in a report from the research firm Gartner.
  • What Does 'Engagement' Do?
    "Engagement" has become one of the more enduring buzzwords of recent years. It started as a vague term tossed about by publishers and then advertisers to indicate some heightened state of communication or interaction between a brand and a consumer. Recently I have heard it made into a more specific noun. Interactions with customers are sometimes called "engagements." To some degree it is an article of faith that engagement is almost an end in itself. But what is the actual effect of engagement? Do different kinds of engagement produce different behaviors in consumers? What needles does this marketing nirvana state …
  • What Are You Doing With My Data?
    It's true: students are conflicted and less-than-knowledgeable about Internet privacy. That was among the findings from research presented by Michelle Prieb, project manager of research at the Center for Media Design at Ball State University, at the latest MediaPost Search Insider Summit.
  • What Did Ya Get? Shopping Where (And How) Your Friends Shop
    A weird YouTube phenomenon has cropped up this past year in the beauty and cosmetics category of uploaded video. Women started uploading videos of themselves showing off what they had just purchased at the mail. Dubbed "Haul Videos," the sub-genre usually shows someone pulling things out of a shopping bag and briefly discussing what they bought and why. Odd, yes, but the retail and cosmetics industry has already taken notice and Haul videos have now become commonplace. Well, it seems safer than skateboarding off garage roofs. But it also suggests a fundamental shopping behavior: seeing what people like you also …
  • Charge For Searches And Content To Rid Internet Of Ads
    Maybe Google, Bing and Yahoo should charge $1 for every search -- and $2 for each piece of content served up. Would consumers pay those prices to avoid having data collected about the types of Web sites they visit?
  • The Week That Was: Privacy Potpourri
    The Federal Trade Commission succeeded in rattling everyone's cage this week. Not only did the lengthy new report on "Protecting Consumer Privacy" move beyond offering guidance to industry for self-regulation, but it laid a roadmap that legislators (or the FTC's own regulators) could take up to start government-level enforcement. And of course, the mere mention of establishing a "Do Not Track" mechanism is sending shivers down industry spines. Just about everyone started scurrying for postures and positions.
  • REI Radio Ad Highlights Consumer Behavior
    During the four-day U.S. Thanksgiving holiday the sports store REI ran a radio ad in southern California referring continually to consumer behavior. The conversation didn't go exactly like this, but I'll give you the gist of it.
  • Shopping Behavior 2010: Phoning It In
    If retailers think the Internet permanently changed the way people research and ultimately shop, they haven't seen anything yet. If merchants want to get scared in a hurry, they should try downloading either the eBay app or the new Amazon Price Check mobile app (both for iPhone). Each app lets you scan a UPC code on any package and not only call up product information, but even see better offers. The Amazon app lets you buy from a range of sources on the spot using your Amazon account.
  • Behavioral Targeting Classifications Read Between The Lines
    Understanding consumer intent and knowing how to meet consumer needs seem like the perfect combination to determine the type of ad to serve up in any given scenario. It could become the key that unlocks nirvana for companies tapping behavioral targeting. I'm not convinced the industry has reached that point, though it's close.
  • SOS: Publishers Have Sprung A Data Leak...Or Two...Or 40
    If publishers don't start making the most of the data they collect on user behavior, then someone else already piggy-backing on their site will. As cookies start flying every which way to feed this complex ad-targeting infrastructure online, the big topic for content providers is "data leakage." Who is collecting data on a publisher's users via third-party cookies and without the publisher's knowledge or consent? We have already seen this year some yield optimizers try to service this worry among their publisher partners. A new category of tag/cookie containers has cropped up, promising to give publishers greater control over the …
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