If you've been keeping track of Nielsen//NetRatings and Media Metrix weekly numbers, you're very familiar with the concepts of at-home Internet use and at-work Internet use. However useful these numbers have been, there is a lot of controversy about measuring techniques that surrounds them. According to researchers at eMarketer, workplace Internet use has long been under reported because companies were "hesitant to have tracking software installed on their computers and workers weren't eager to tell interviewers how much they surfed on company time." eMarketer has taken it upon themselves to find out the truth about the business …

If you've been keeping track of Nielsen//NetRatings and Media Metrix weekly numbers, you're very familiar with the concepts of at-home Internet use and at-work Internet use. However useful these numbers have been, there is a lot of controversy about measuring techniques that surrounds them. According to researchers at eMarketer, workplace Internet use has long been under reported because companies were "hesitant to have tracking software installed on their computers and workers weren't eager to tell interviewers how much they surfed on company time." eMarketer has taken it upon themselves to find out the truth about the business users …

As we reported in MediaDailyNews yesterday, a New York-based media research firm has released a study showing that as frequency of exposure to banners increases, click-through rates decrease. Time to dust off those old advertising textbooks and turn back to basics. The concept of ad "wear-out" has been around as long as advertising itself. Decades of studying TV advertising, for example, have shown that viewers learn to skip over or ignore TV commercials with excessive exposure. Same goes for banners. It should be noted that if and when the web is proven as a valuable branding medium, frequency …

With the 2000 Olympic Games only two days away, you'd think that Olympic sponsors and advertisers would be racing ahead on the Web with flashy campaigns and sports-themed messaging. Guess again! "Judging by what we've tracked so far," says online tracking firm AdRelevance, "Olympic advertising on the Web seems to be as exclusive as the Games themselves, with a limited number of official sponsors fighting for the gold of promotional dominance online. Two brand alliances that have produced early lopsided victories include IBM and the Sydney Organized Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), and Oldsmobile and CNN/Sports Illustrated (CNNsi). …

On the wings of yesterday's AdRelevance discovery - online advertising by businesses targeting families grew while advertising by companies targeting children declined - today, possibly to support yesterday's release, the parent companies of AdRelevance came out with their own research report. According to Jupiter and Media Metrix, contrary to popular belief, teens spend far less time online on average - in both number and length of sessions - than adults do. Researchers found that teens spend an average of 303 minutes online per month, compared with the adult average of 728 minutes per month. Jupiter analysts believe …

Even though online advertising by businesses targeting families and children grew steadily through the first quarter of this year, advertisers wanting to reach kids online are shifting their focus away from children and on to families. The latest AdRelevance Intelligence Report says online advertising by businesses targeting families grew 96% between May 2000 and August 2000, while advertising by companies targeting children declined 56% in the same period. After analyzing standard 468x60 banner ad campaigns of 183 child and family-focused online advertisers between January 2000 and August 200, AdRelevance found that a majority of ad impressions for …

While we don't usually write about branding, you may find this interesting. New-York based research firm Dynamic Logic - http://www.dynamiclogic.com - founded in 1999 by Nick Nyhan, the former Director of Online Research of ModemMedia/PoppeTyson, has found a direct relationship between how "cluttered" a banner is and its success in lifting brand awareness. According to the company's latest polling of 33,433 respondents, uncluttered banners lifted awareness by 14% whereas cluttered banners lifted awareness by only 3%. The company's monthly newsletter profiles the study, stating, "Brand awareness refers to the proportion of people who are familiar with the brand …

I hate to rain on anyone's parade, especially when it comes to new technology, but lately it seems that wireless devices are generating more hype than they're worth. For example, in today's Media Buying section of ClickZ, a well-known industry pundit is touting the glory of PDAs, saying, "I think there are plenty of opportunities to use Palm devices to get your advertiser's name in front of appropriate consumers." The writer lists branding opportunities and sponsored data files for existing applications as "ideas for leveraging the Palm computing platform to the benefit of both consumers and advertisers." But …

After yesterday's discussion of free ISPs (Internet Service Providers), I realized that I'm not the only one out there getting lost in the world of the 3-letter words. Webster's defines "acronym" as an "abbreviation formed from the initial letters of the words in a phrase," but no matter how you define them, media acronyms are downright confusing. By now we're all familiar with the basics that come from traditional media, like IO (Insertion order), RFP (Request for Proposal) and CPM (Cost per Thousand impressions). The online-only terms, however, seem to multiply. We started out with CTR (Click-Through Rate), which …

Free ISPs are proving themselves as viable advertising vehicles, according to a report released last Wednesday by Nielsen//NetRatings, but several factors limit the services' appropriateness for media buys. The positives of advertising with free ISPs, as the study suggests, are many. For one, free ISPs allow for more flexibility in ad delivery, as well as in their content. Also, they can also provide for more precise targeting and more complex advertising models than advertisers can hope for with traditional on-site means. Additionally, the study's findings suggest that advertising on free ISPs reaches a more active Internet population …