Good timing! The Internet World Wireless show is in full swing in New York, but Accenture, formerly known as Andersen Consulting, released a study today that says only a tiny fraction of people use the mobile Internet and even fewer shop on it. While use of the wireless Web varied widely among users surveyed in the U.S., U.K., Finland, Germany and Japan - with the highest usage in Japan and the lowest in Finland and the U.S. - users in all five countries overwhelmingly view wired PC connections as the most viable option at present for accessing the Internet. …

As you well know, January 2001 was a cruel month for the Internet sector. Here are some official numbers. At least 49 Internet companies closed their doors as funding ran dry and customers failed to materialize in adequate numbers, says a new report from Webmergers.com, a company that provides a research-backed hub for buyers and sellers of Internet properties. The above is particularly distressing considering that only one dot-com closed down in January of last year. Shutdowns in the month included Disney's entertainment portal Go.com, group buying site Mercata.com, gifts e-tailer Send.com and health site SelfCare.com. January …

A new Myers Mediaenomics report indicates that ad executives are commoditizing Internet advertising by using traditional media value systems to evaluate Web ad effectiveness. The Internet's unique traits - one-to-one marketing capabilities and real-time access to consumers - are overshadowed by other attributes that are shared by other, more established media, the report says. When ad executives use the Internet in ways that mimic mass media usage, they are generally disappointed. Respondents identified "Driving Traffic to Site," "Branding," and Integrated Marketing/Multimedia Packages" as the top three reasons for using online advertising, but it's clear those reasons are not …

Even though we don't normally talk about direct response issues, a new e-coupon service from Advertising.com is launching this week and it's worth a mention. The concept is fairly simple - it's a web-based delivery system that gives advertisers the ability to reach consumers online with coupons while allowing consumers to choose when and how they will receive these offers. A regular 468x60 website banner invites a customer to receive a coupon for a free or discounted something. The customer enters his wireless phone number into the banner and immediately receives the coupon as a text message on his …

Well, it's about time. According to stock analyst Henry Blodget, online advertising picked up slightly this month over January and AOL Time Warner and Yahoo are among the companies expected to benefit from a stabilizing online advertising market. "Conversations with online media buyers and companies suggest that although overall demand is still soft, pricing has stabilized at the leading sites, which we regard as encouraging," Blodget said in his regular report. Blodget said that even though companies from Yahoo to CMGI recently projected a slowdown in ad revenue for the year and saw their stocks sink, giants like …

While Internet companies are in turmoil and layoffs abound, overall online advertising grew 5% from December to January. At least that's according to the most recent AdZone Interactive research report. AdZone tracks advertising on 1,700 U.S. websites, which make up more than 95% of all Internet ad revenue, and has been criticized in the past for being too bullish in their predictions. For example, they say December 2000 came in at $1.785 billion in estimated revenue and January 2001 totaled $1.867 billion - both figures seem astronomical even when compared to the IAB numbers, which are largely designed to …

With the topic of using search engine listings as ad vehicles still fresh in my mind, I just couldn't resist telling you about another research report I stumbled on today. This one is a two-year study by Alexa Research, which has just revealed that instead of entering a URL into the address field of their Web browsers, a huge number of Internet users enter the name of the site they want into the search box of their start-up homepage or other search engine. Alexa's findings are based on an examination of more than 42 million search pages viewed …

With Valentine's Day around the corner I felt sentimental enough to look back at last year's Valentine's Minute and instead of inspiration, found this phrase: "With the January advertising blues behind them, most ad networks are seeing a sizable boost in February and even March buys." Funny how things change, isn't it? As I went further down the Minute Archive list, however, I found another column about the evils of self-serving research studies. Some things never change. GoTo.com, which calls itself a "leading provider of Pay-For- Performance search services," today released findings from a "pioneering new study" …

Even though the XFL television ratings victory was short- lived, the website activity for the new football league, jointly owned by the World Wrestling Federation and NBC, seems to point to a trend. For decades, we've debated the effectiveness of broadcast ads during sporting events. Enter the web. Enter sports sites. Current result - much bigger debate. How about running online ads on sports sites affiliated with a sports event? To this day, the wider-spread opinion is that people will not get off the couch during a game to log on to the web, so what's the point of …

It came as a surprise to some when NetZero, the frontrunner of the free ISP group, announced a roll-out of a premium fee- based access service called NZ Platinum this week. At $9.95 a month, paying subscribers won’t be required to accept ads as they are on NetZero’s free service. But NetZero will still expose its paying users to advertising, through its start- page portal and its email service. Now the ad industry is evaluating the benefits of advertising on Free ISPs all over again, so I thought I'd remind you of something we found a few months back. …