A bunch of teen sites are competing for stickiest status. The largest generation since the baby boomers, “Gen i” (a term trademarked by Snowball.com) comprises 67.7 million 15-24 year-olds who’ve grown up with the Internet. ICQ, AOL’s IM, Napster, and MP3 downloads are as fun and as familiar to this segment as Princess phones and record turntables were to an older generation. “This isn’t specialized geekdom…this is an up-to-the-minute media universe,” said Michael Wolff, describing his 16-year-old daughter’s room for New York Magazine. “There converge multiple copper land lines, high-speed broadband connectivity, cable access, and wireless cell and …

Measurement is hot—arguably the most controversial topic in the online industry. Everyone wants to know the secret to reaching a target audience online in the most efficient and effective manner, but since the medium is so young, there’s not much data to base decisions on. For decades, firms like Nielsen, Arbitron, MRI and others have been researching consumer interactions with traditional media to give advertisers a better idea of where, when and how to run their ads for best results. Online is no different. So let’s take a closer look at two of the leading online audience measurement firms—Nielsen//NetRatings and …

At the Seattle-based interactive media agency Avenue A, data is king—but in a highly democratic way. Unlike most fiefdoms, and most organizations, for that matter, the three-year-old company believes that power well spread strengthens all players. Its policy of collecting, mining, applying and disseminating hard-won information clearly works: in first-quarter 2000, Avenue A won 26 new clients (including Best Buy and Flooz.com), driving revenues to $46.8 million, a 1,804 percent increase over the year-ago period and 31 percent higher than fourth-quarter 1999. The company’s name, an offhand nod to New York City funk, places it high among listings in …

With the widespread increase in bandwidth and lower cost of technology, one of the lesser-used Internet functions now beginning to catch on is desktop videoconferencing. Using the Internet for desktop videoconferencing provides media planners and buyers the opportunity to conduct meetings, pitches, client presentations, seminars and media sales calls from their own computer to anywhere in the world. The benefits are numerous: more people can participate in meetings, travel expenses are eliminated and information is exchanged more quickly. For a videoconference to take place, both parties must have audio-visual equipment (monitor, camera, microphone, and at least one speaker) as …

We all know the Internet universe is rapidly expanding, but did you know that the Internet adds about four new worldwide users every second. Speed in growth is nothing compared to the “time compression” in terms of the traditional business cycle. For most of the past century, the traditional business cycle was 18 years. With the onset of the computer industry, this was reduced to 18 months. The Internet has further squeezed this cycle to 18 weeks. In the not so distant future we may have 18-hour business cycles. How does this affect media planners? Well first off, clients …