Have you seen the new Ford Explorer ad on Yahoo!? Not to sound like a giddy schoolgirl, but you have to check it out. This ad is by far one of the best executions I've seen on the web to date. It's only up for one day, so do it soon. This afternoon, as I was trying to think of a gentle way to tell you that at least 55 Internet companies folded in April, making it the second deadliest month since February, our VP of Sales & Marketing Nick Friese ran into my office and asked if …

Two weeks ago I reported on a study from Dynamic Logic which showed that the "incremental branding value of additional impressions beyond five exposures levels off and shows diminishing returns for the advertiser." Today, another research firm released a study supporting those findings. Diameter, a division of DoubleClick, also found a direct correlation between multiple exposures to online ads and an increase in brand metrics. The study was conducted for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and revealed that advertising awareness of the Make-A-Wish banner ad increased 51% from a baseline awareness of 16% to 25% with five exposures to the ad. …

The future of the advertising industry is anyone's guess at this point. This morning, according to a New York Times story, a "leading media forecaster has reduced his estimate for American advertising spending in 2001, predicting for the first time a decline for this year from 2000." It's official. "We are in a genuine advertising recession, and we can expect some radical belt-tightening and shifting of business plans and strategies," the forecaster said. That forecaster is Jack Myers, chief economist at Myers Reports in New York. Generally optimistic and bullish on ad spending, this time around Myers estimated …

Could this be a sign of good things to come for the online advertising industry? Everyone's been bemoaning the speed (or lack thereof) with which traditional advertisers are embracing online ad vehicles, but it seems some progress is being made. Slowly, but surely. Unfortunately, I only have one example, but it's worth mentioning - Ask Jeeves. Last week they announced that brick-and-mortar mainstay Coca-Cola had signed on, and today nine more advertisers - Autoweb, Apartments.com, Intuit, Hertz, iVillage.com, Travelocity.com, JustFlowers.com, Marriott and Toyota - joined the roster. The new signings come just as Ask Jeeves said it would lay …

Blame it on the season, but everywhere I look, people are talking about weddings. As luck would have it, weddings these days have an online advertising component worth discussing in this column. Here's an example: when the owners of Kleinfeld, one of the nation's oldest and largest upscale bridal salons, recently advertised a designer sample sale on TheKnot.com, hundreds of brides came crashing through their doors, proving that online advertising does work with the right equation. That equation, according to The Knot is "highly-targeted consumer base, highly-trafficked media outlets, relatively low competition, innovative technology and affordable prices." Nothing …

Here's an interesting stat about at-work Internet surfers: of all destinations on the web, people are choosing to hang out at NASA.gov. The Internet ratings report for the week ending April 22 from Nielsen//NetRatings, shows that traffic to NASA.gov spiked 75% as office workers flocked to the site to get the latest video and audio updates of the space shuttle Endeavor launch. Traffic to the site jumped to 567,000 unique visitors for the week ending April 22, making it one of the fastest growing domains at work. Men comprised 56% of the traffic, while women made up 44%. Surfers …

I recently read a column in one of the trade journals where the author blamed the standard banner for essentially killing all creativity in online advertising. You've probably read many an article like that yourself - he's not the first, or the last, to complain about not being able to let his creative juices flow freely within a 468x60 rectangle. I don't support blaming size for lackluster results, but just for kicks, here's a cool tool I found in my web travels that should give all creative complainers an alternative canvas (and no, I'm not talking about bigger units). …

If you're a regular reader of this column, you know I'm very wary of endorsing anything in this day and age, so this will be a first for me. I'm talking about WebSideStory and the release of the latest version of their HitBox Enterprise service, which I think is one of the best website tracking tools available today - http://www.hitboxenterprise.com. Simply put, HitBox can tell you just about everything you could ever want to know about user activity on a site you're considering for an ad buy (provided that site subscribes to HitBox). I won't waste your time …

Here's some data to help us figure out the much debated concept of frequency of online ads. Dynamic Logic's AdIndex researchers have found that the branding value of online advertising plateaus after five exposures in the specific area of "message association." Dynamic Logic defines message association as a metric that helps advertisers determine the degree to which people associate a specific tagline or value-proposition (i.e., Just do it) with a specific brand (i.e., Nike). Their latest findings, based on aggregate data from many campaigns tested, indicate that the "incremental branding value of additional impressions beyond five exposures levels …

The Internet advertising industry celebrated its fifth birthday in the year 2000 and while the future looks uncertain, the past is officially chronicled.The Interactive Advertising Bureau released the official Q4 2000 numbers this afternoon and according to Rich LeFurgy, chairman of the IAB, and Pete Petruskey, a PricewaterhouseCoopers analyst, total Internet ad spending for 2000 was $8.2 billion, a 78% increase over 1999. The figure for 4Q 2000 is $2.2 billion, a 9% increase over 3Q. The bad news is that the Internet advertising sector will probably never again see growth rates like that. "As our base gets bigger and …