Once everyone's favorite buzzword, convergence is no longer the stuff of dreams. The Internet has blurred many lines between different media, and that's good news because with every blurry line, we get yet another ad vehicle. Some work and some don't, but almost all are worth a try. To that end, (and this is not an endorsement, just something I stumbled upon in my inbox) Ten Square, a Silicon Valley company, is making interactive advertising accessible to everyday life - one gas pump at a time. Point-of-sale (POS) advertising is one of the oldest concepts in the book, …

As pessimism spreads across the U.S. online advertising land this holiday weekend, following disappointing earnings announcements from DoubleClick, trouble at 24/7, Yahoo and others, I thought it might help to look to the rest of the world, namely the United Kingdom, for some good news. And good news it is. Online advertising continues to grow at a staggering rate in the UK, surging over 200% year-on-year in 2000, a survey showed on Wednesday. Total spending on online advertising totaled 154.7 million pounds ($221.7 million) in 2000 up from 51 million in 1999, the survey by UK's Internet …

A few minutes ago, DoubleClick, an indicator of the health of the online advertising industry, announced financial results for the first quarter of 2001, and provided a business outlook for the remainder of the year. There's definitely room for optimism. According to the announcement, DoubleClick exceeded consensus analyst expectations despite a weak online advertising environment. The company reported revenue of $114.9 million for the first quarter of 2001, an increase of 4% over the same period last year. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2001 was $64.5 million, a 12% increase over gross profit of $57.6 million in the …

Don't do a double-take. The Internet Advertising Bureau is taking on a new, more contemporary name. Meet the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The name change is an attempt to attract a wider variety of members to the organization. And they're changing membership requirements to go with the new name. In an effort to concentrate on building confidence in and promoting the value of interactive advertising and marketing, the IAB will expand its membership eligibility to include all companies actively engaged in the sale of interactive advertising and marketing. That means that interactive TV and wireless advertising firms can now …

We know that women outnumber men on the Web. It's time advertisers took advantage of that knowledge. A new study by Millward Brown suggests that as the primary decision-maker in household purchases, online women represent a crucial market for advertisers, especially in the consumer packaged goods arena. The study suggests that women take to the Net to look for actionable offers or relevant product information, and that a sizable chunk of this information-gathering comes from ads. According to the study, 60% of study respondents said they click on banner ads to acquire more information, while 34% go back …

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but today was not a happy day for the media industry, at least on the Wall Street side of things. First, we learned that NBC has pulled the plug on NBCi, and will immediately begin cutting the size of its work force as it prepares to scale down the business. NBC executives said during a telephone press conference that continued softness in the ad market, particularly a collapse in the Internet ad business, made it impossible to keep the company going. Déjà vu, anyone? "NBCi was highly dependent on other …

It's official. Whenever there's a huge event on TV, expect the corresponding websites to boast huge increases in traffic in the following days. As you may remember, the Super Bowl is the first and best example of this phenomenon - daily traffic to SuperBowl.com at home spiked 269% on that Sunday. Not surprisingly, the Oscars, referred to by some demographics watchers as "Super Bowl for Women," is a close runner up. The Internet ratings report for the week ending April 1 from Nielsen//NetRatings, shows that traffic to EOnline.com spiked 160% to 1.5 million unique visitors, as surfers …

When DoubleClick closed their Brazilian office early last month, they probably didn't expect eMarketer to forecast that 6.1 million Brazilians will be actively using the Internet by the end of this year, increasing to 16.4 million by 2004. Granted, forecasts probably didn't make much difference. But how about the Internet audience measurement lawsuit Jupiter Media Metrix just won? This week, DoubleClick introduced a new independent research division called Diameter, designed to compete directly with Jupiter and Nielsen//NetRatings. Diameter will offer three areas of research: media intelligence, audience measurement and advertising effectiveness. Online market research company @plan, recently …

If baseball fans are you target audience, you may want to consider geo-targeting your online advertising to Cleveland, Atlanta and Boston. A new Scarborough Sports Marketing study reveals that Cleveland (32%), Atlanta (30%) and Boston (28%) lead the nation with the highest percentage of Internet savvy Major League Baseball (MLB) fans. The study shows that these markets have a high percentage of people who are both online and are loyal major league baseball fans. These fans surf the Web primarily for sports updates and scores, news and shopping. Other cities with a high concentration of loyal …

I generally don't talk about things offline, but this one made me laugh. Talk about taking the dot-com crash too far. As Adweek online reported recently, TV's Ron Livingston ("Office Space") and Leslie Stefanson ("Unbreakable") have been tapped as the leads in Charles Randolph's untitled Silicon Valley-themed dramedy pilot for ABC, about a dot-com in dire need of resuscitation. The pair will star as young, ambitious co-owners of a once- hot dot-com, who are forced to bring in corporate-type executives to help save their company after the company stock takes a dive. Realistic enough, right? I can see the …