The amount of time we spend online may be leading us (and our target audiences) to see Web surfing not as a special occasion, but as a regular activity from which to take breaks during the holidays and other non-work days. The Internet ratings report for the month of December 2000 from Nielsen//NetRatings, reveals that Web users have been steadily spending less time surfing the Internet at-home and at-work in the past few months. The average time spent per person online declined from 17.5 in October 2000 to 14.9 hours in December. Web usage dropped across the board …

It seems the golden era of advertising tradeshows and conferences may be coming to an end. Gone are the days when wide-eyed 20-somethings, dressed in all black, listened breathlessly to thinly veiled PowerPoint pitches from web start-ups that had a slim chance of surviving the next 6 months. Gone are the days when they were willing to shell out thousands of dollars for a few days of "networking." Simply put, at least in the ad media business, gone are the days of blind faith in the power of the Internet. The power is on its way back into the …

Tomorrow I'll be at the "Future of Media Buying and Selling" Myers Forum in New York, and here's a sneak preview of one of the reports scheduled to be released there. The report, "Sharp Curves Ahead: Tough Realities for Media Exchanges," includes the results of a Myers Mediaenomics study from December 2000 indicating that less than 9% of marketing and agency media executives have used an online ad exchange in the previous six months. The report is especially timely since last week alone several new ad exchanges - AdOctane, Cuica and AdOutlet Private Labels - have decided to …

As you may remember, in October of last year, Volvo showed great confidence in web marketing by launching - with much fanfare - its new S60 sedan exclusively online. Now that the results are in, the fanfare is not as audible. As it turns out, the car maker has sold less than 3,000 of the vehicles since then. And even though Phil Bienert, Volvo's manager of e-business, does not see the campaign as a failure - nearly one million people visited the special revolvolution.com website, and stayed an average of nine minutes - Volvo says there's little chance they'll …

According to the latest data from Dynamic Logic, online advertising significantly lifts message association for traditional brands. That's the degree to which people associate a particular message with a specific brand - "Just For The Taste Of It" and Diet Coke, for example. Based on answers given by 13,633 respondents, the impact of online ads is generally stronger in the area of message association: for traditional brands, message association is lifted by 16% on average whereas brand awareness is lifted by only 5% on average. Researchers say an important reason for the difference in the lift levels …

Surprise, surprise! Not all is rotten in the state of online ad exchanges. Relatively speaking... At a time when so many dot com companies are breathing their last breath and analysts are bracing themselves for predictably disappointing fourth quarter and full year 2000 earnings reports from the biggest players, one company is beaming with optimism. That company is Cuica Corporation - http://www.cuica.com - an e-advertising infrastructure company, which today announced the launch of CuicaExchange, a dynamic online advertising marketplace. Company officials say CuicaExchange is already live with ad deals from top e-business and advertising providers and currently, thousands of …

With all this dot-com gloom, it's interesting to see that most "analysts" are still optimistic about the growth of online ad spending. All except one, actually. As we reported in MediaDailyNews this morning, one of the gurus, Merrill Lynch Internet analyst Henry Blodget yesterday said he expects virtually no growth in overall online ad spending this year. Blodget said the totals of 2001 will amount to the same $8 billion as 2000, because of "continued cutbacks by dot-coms and a weaker overall advertising environment." "Our new estimate for 2001 is $8 billion, flat year-over- year, down from $9 …

This morning I stumbled across yet another self-proclaimed "leader" in the field of online advertising - Liquid Advertising - which announced the launch of their "new first-of-a-kind" program called LiquidResponse. According to company officials, LiquidResponse solves many of the problems facing online marketers by guaranteeing advertisers a return on their online advertising investment. A client works with Liquid Advertising to determine what a sale, sales lead, registration or page view is worth. Liquid Advertising then develops a custom direct online marketing strategy for each client, based on his or her individual metrics for profitability. As the official …

Here's an eye-opener: content sites are an important venue for advertising, but only the best, the fittest, will survive. According to a recent Forrester Research study, sites currently scrambling to survive on ad revenue will begin to be profitable in about two years, once online ad spending hits $13 billion, as Forrester says it will at that point. Based on the above, the report's biggest pieces of advice to advertisers is that they should be taking advantage of today's low prices by opting for long-term ad deals whenever possible. Perhaps it is my inherent forecast/prediction-related cynicism, but …

Stifled gasps spread across the media industry this morning after Engage announced their plans for massive workforce cuts in the upcoming months. The employee headcount will be reduced by 550 (about 50%) and the company now intends to increase its focus on software, since that area typically produces higher gross margins than Engage's media business. As I read the nearly hysterical media coverage of the story, I remembered a conversation I had with Jeff Dickey, Advertising.com's Chief Strategy Officer back in June, when he said that advertising networks in their current configuration are soon to be a thing of …