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 …

A press release crossed the wire this morning, titled, "Traditional Magazine Publishers See E-Newsletters as Important Supplement to Print Publications." Well, it's about time! The Clientize-Folio: E-Newsletter Survey, prepared by Clientize, an Internet marketing company serving the publishing industry, found a bright spot in a generally weak publishing market. According to the findings, almost half - 41.4% - of the top consumer and business-to-business magazines as identified by Folio: distribute free eNewsletters. Not surprisingly, these researchers found that ad click- through rates for eNewsletters are much higher than banner ads. Click-through rates on advertisements of 5% or …

We've all heard of, and possibly dealt with banner and other ad media exchanges in the past. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with an email exchange. Opt-in News, the permission based email marketing portal and news network, this week announced the launch of an email ad exchange Opt-in Source. The official announcement states that the new service, much like all similar ones before it, brings buyers and sellers together in an easy to manage interface. "Our intention was to level the playing ground for advertisers by developing an environment that places them …

If all goes according to Jupiter Media Metrix' plan, soon you'll have fewer decisions to make when planning your online campaigns. Jupiter said today that it has settled its patent infringement suit against PC Data Inc., which has agreed to drop out of the business of tracking computer usage. Jupiter also filed similar suits against competitors NetRatings Inc. and NetValue USA, claiming that NetRatings Inc. and NetValue USA also violated the company's patent on a tracking system. In the lawsuit Jupiter Media Metrix seeks a permanent injunction precluding both NetRatings and NetValue from infringing Jupiter Media Metrix' patent …

Here's an interesting piece of [self-serving] research from an intriguing company. New Jersey-based Amicada Inc. - http://www.amicada.com - which specializes in delivery of full-frame, full-motion video, both online and offline, irrespective of a user's Internet bandwidth, today announced the results of a research project which showed that there is indeed a business model for Internet based TV-advertising. Amicada's model, that is, but it deserves a mention nonetheless. The interface prompts users when a commercial is available to be viewed and gives the choice to activate it or not. Activation launches a full-screen viewer, which displays the commercial in full-motion …

I promise this will be the last time I talk about this topic until something truly significant happens, but to dot all the i's and to confirm the online advertising industry's critical reactions to the IAB's big banner standards, this report deserves a mention. Jupiter Media Metrix today reported that although 25% of ad-supported websites host large banner ads, less than 5% run formats that comply with new standards. New research from JMM's AdRelevance division reveals that the number of ads exactly matching the new standards did increase by 50% during each week in February, yet they accounted for less …

It seems like the rest of the world is catching on to two realizations the U.S. came to a long time ago. One is that the absence of an eMarketing strategy is detrimental to a company's success. The second is that banners do not make for successful customer acquisition. According to a survey recently done by UK's NewWorld Commerce and Marketing Week, 63% of companies already have an eMarketing strategy in place, with websites being the most important element of an eMarketing campaign, and sponsorship of third party sites being the least popular. Early adopters of technology, such …