Although analysts are predicting a massive shakeout in the online retail industry, it is becoming increasingly apparent that online advertising - by online-only retailers - has a very positive impact when it comes to increasing quality visits to shopping sites. At least that's what AdRelevance found. Their new research report, "The Rise (and Fall?) of Online Retail," reveals a strong positive correlation between online advertising and engaged visitors - or visitors who spend at least three minutes a day viewing content at an online entity - to online retail sites. According to report - available at http://www.adrelevance.com - …

Earlier this week, Jesse Burst of AnchorDesk – www.zdnet.com/anchordesk - said that even though pundits have predicted the web would siphon viewers and advertisers from traditional media, it hasn't happened yet. But, he wrote, it will soon. "Starting this year, traditional media will feel the pain as advertisers flee to the web," he said, addition that the old media "isn't going to die, but it is going to get sick." We could toss that up to yet another pundit prediction and happily enjoy the prognosis of having the advertising media world generate enough news to supply this column with …

Here's another fancy word to add to the list of terms hanging on your corkboard - "optimization." Chances are, you're hearing it from every online ad network as they explain their targeting capabilities. So what exactly is optimization? Without getting too geeky, it's an automated process (generally based on sophisticated mathematical formulas) that allows ad servers to place the most relevant ads in the optimal locations. More simply put, depending on your campaign goals - number of impressions, click-throughs, or conversions - ad servers can tell you which of your ads are most effective on what sites and adjust your …

We've read about teens on the web. We think we know a bunch about women and men, adults, other webbie demos, but the online habits of seniors are somewhat of an enigma. It turns out, however, that Americans 55 and older with Web access use the Internet to its full capabilities, 93% shopping online, 95% using email and 90% participating in online sweepstakes or contests. Those are the results of a recent Greenfield Online study, "Surfing Seniors," which surveyed almost 3,000 seniors and found that the majority is not just dabbling on the Internet. Nearly a third spend 2 …

Who said banners don't work? As Digitrends reported earlier today, online advertising increases brand awareness, despite an annual decline in banner ad click-through rates. That's what research firm Dynamic Logic discovered recently, following the completion of its latest Internet marketing study where 18,000-plus campaigns surveyed were able to increase brand awareness an average of 6% compared to awareness before the campaigns ran. Dynamic Logic concluded that although the click-through rate drops by approximately 1% a year, it's possible that banners can raise awareness for a brand, even if the banner ad is not clicked on by the …

We've all read how teens, the darlings of advertiser target groups, are facing weighty issues like sex and drugs at younger ages, but the good news may be that teens are also learning to deal with these more serious matters earlier as well. Qtopics - http://www.qtopics.com - an online polling company that offers people the chance to ask their own questions, conducted a national survey of 800 teenagers ages 13 to 17 years old asking them what they want to know from their favorite music pop star. According to the results, younger teens are more curious about topics like …

Before I get into what's noteworthy in the online world today, a quick house announcement: we are very pleased to announce that we've made a substantial improvement to our media planning and flowcharting system MPlanner - http://www.mplanner.com - by integrating our directories into it to help you find the most appropriate media vehicle for your plans. You can now search and add magazine titles by category, newspaper titles by city, radio stations by market, TV stations by market and websites by category & network. And through our immediabuy online buying system rate matrix, you can access and import suggested banner …

The results are in and congratulations are in order. The Forbes.com Best of the Web results, that is. Not surprisingly, the following companies made it into the Media and Advertising category: - OneMediaPlace.com (formerly AdAuction.com, an online marketplace for media planners, buyers and sellers, specializing in online, outdoor, TV, radio and print advertising); - AdOutlet.com (an exchange for buyers and sellers of all forms of media, including TV, radio, Internet and print) and - BuyMedia.com, (an exchange for radio, broadcast TV and cable advertising time). Anybody notice a pattern? All of the above are of a peculiar breed …

If June was "let's form an organization" month, July is starting out as "let's set some guidelines" month. Not that I've specifically chosen the Internet Advertising Bureau - http://www.iab.net - to pick on, but today they released two announcements dealing with privacy and wireless advertising guidelines. And, unfortunately, the only phrase that came to this cynical mind was déjà vu. The good news is, the IAB has finally released a set of "recommended" privacy guidelines for its membership in conjunction with last months' Privacy Forum meeting in NYC. The full text is available on the IAB website including …

The first definitive study of online sports, released today by Screen Digest, predicts advertising spend on sports websites will exceed $6 billion a year by 2005. The report, entitled "Sport on the Internet," says that typical online sports visitors have a higher net-worth and propensity to buy online compared to visitors to other types of sites. And the "stickiness" of sports sites makes them more attractive to advertisers and sponsors. The report highlights the official Wimbledon site, for which traffic grows up to 700% year on year. The Euro 2000 website was expected to receive over 150 million …