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 …

As you know, the focus of this publication is online media. Increasingly, however, we are faced with the fact that all media is cosmically connected, so I thought you might appreciate a sneak peak at a new medium poised to shake up our landscape - subscription satellite radio. Two companies -- Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio -- are launching pay satellite radio in the new year, aiming to give listeners hundreds of customized radio channels to choose from, better sound quality and, predictably, fewer commercials. All in return for a $9.95/month subscription fee. Of course, traditional …

As we slowly get back into the swing of things now that the holiday season is officially over, here's one last prediction -- Just wait. This year will be better. For the online ad industry, few would argue that 2001 is starting off on a sour note, but as Chris Hansen, an ad industry analyst with Banc of America Securities in San Francisco said, "Things should pick back up in the second and third quarter." That's largely because online ad budgets do continue to grow year after year even in the face of total advertising and marketing budget …