Spending on Internet advertising continued to increase in the United States in October, increasing almost eight percent from the previous month, to about 1.7 billion U.S. dollars, according to a report released Monday. America Online was the biggest spender, with two of its operations spending a total of 44 million dollars in October, according to the report from AdZone Interactive, a research firm that tracks advertising on 1,700 U.S. websites that account for 95% of all U.S. Internet advertising revenue. The top ten advertised brands spent approximately 149.5 million dollars on U.S. websites in October. America Online, …

Will this year's online holiday shopping season be as exciting as last year's? Last year, pundits predicted that this year's online holiday shopping season would start earlier. But a number of reports made it into the spotlight yesterday, leaving people in the advertising and e-tailing industries very confused. For one, Nielsen//NetRatings says the holiday shopping season has yet to begin - the week ending November 5 showed a zero percent growth over the prior week. "Last year's holiday shopping season began with a big bang right after people put away their Halloween costumes," said Sean Kaldor, VP of eCommerce …

Combating the spreading hysteria about the health of the online ad industry, Engage today released its third quarter Online Advertising Report (OAR). The report's lead finding determined that there is a strong pattern emerging of users who recently saw an online ad to those converting to a sale. For the first time, analysis demonstrates that seeing ads alone causes sales, according to the report. By measuring how quickly people convert after seeing ads, a dramatic pattern emerges. Users who more recently saw an ad have a higher propensity to convert, indicating a causal relationship between the view and the …

This week has seen some conflicting reports about the health of the online advertising industry. Notably, a CBS Marketwatch story earlier this week started off with, "Just when investors in online ad companies might have thought it couldn't get any worse, it did." The story was referring to latest announcement of disappointing results and 200 job cuts at 24/7 Media - that's 17% of its force - and an earnings warning and abrupt resignation of the CEO at Engage. Stock prices, once again, took a nose dive. Not surprisingly, Goldman Sachs and ING Barings downgraded Engage, while 24/7 …

I knew it was too good to be true. As excited as I was about the useful content at Web Marketing 2000 in New Orleans last week, this week's granddaddy of all online advertising conferences - @d:Tech - is back to the same format we should all be used to. I did, however, find something on the trade show floor late yesterday night that made me actually say that most childish phrase out loud - "This is SO COOL!" The company in question is Radical Communication, formerly RadicalMail, which yesterday launched the first of its kind "Buy Within …

I take it back... A few months ago, when I said industry organizations do more talking than doing, someone must have been listening. Yesterday, the Wireless Advertising Association (WAA) board of directors actually released news of their first accomplishment - the Privacy and Spam Recommended Guidelines. The guidelines are intended for the WAA members and are based on the premise that wireless push advertising should only be sent to customers who have asked for it. According to the release, the following voluntary guidelines define privacy and spam issues and set forth the following general principles: - WAA …

As you know, yesterday, AdRelevance released their newest intelligence report, which found that despite full banner popularity, other ad formats account for the majority of online impressions (63%) and garner greater exposure. It's worth mentioning that AdRelevance also showed that all industries have different technological needs when it comes to animation. Generally speaking, every industry pundit out there is recommending the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (KISS) philosophy when it comes to online ads, and it looks like advertisers are listening. As the report authors said, it appears that while sites are making efforts to accommodate newer ad technologies …

Although 80% of advertisers use the full banner in online campaigns, other ad formats account for a majority of impressions and garner far greater exposure on the web, according to a report released today by AdRelevance. Buttons (short, micro, medium and tall) and different sized banners (half, short and vertical) collectively make up 63% of all online ad impressions, while standard banners account for only 37%, the report says. Though the full banner accounts for the largest number of ads per company (18.3 on average), it garners far less exposure than other ad types, when measuring impressions per …

It's not often you hear helpful advice at an industry conference, but Web Marketing 2000 Day 4 surprised me. Basic as it may be, considering how often we forget the basics in the Internet age, this is worth highlighting. The credit goes to i-frontier's Brad Aronson, who, in an hour or so, outlined some basic steps of planning an online campaign. First and foremost, he said, be prepared - if your deadline is ASAP, you're not going to get the best deal. When it comes to ad model selection, he said, banners are best if you have a …

Hello from New Orleans. I'm here for the last two days of Thunder Lizard's Web Marketing 2000 show. Today and tomorrow will focus on online advertising (rather than marketing in general) so watch for my reports in the upcoming issues. But for now, if you decided to play it safe and avoid New Orleans' famous Bourbon Street on Halloween (like myself) - here's some highlights we missed. On the first day of the show, which started Monday, according to Adele Bienvenu from Online Ads Discussion List (which does a good job reporting live from tradeshows), focused on testing. She …