For most of 2001, online travel agents bucked the dot-com demise. Then came the airplane hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Online bookings immediately dropped by more than half, and cancellations were substantial. Within a few days, though, transactions began to increase, which Richard Barton, Expedia’s president and CEO, characterized as an “encouraging indication of the resilience of the American spirit.” The five-year-old company achieved profitability earlier this year. And through June, Expedia—rated the No. 1 online travel agent by Gomez.com and responsible for 25 percent of gross online bookings—took in total revenues of $78.5 …

Since we started regularly running the Ad Network Watch in MEDIA Magazine, many networks have come and gone. Some lost funding. Some couldn’t drum up enough business to stay afloat. Some altered their business structure. Most networks have enhanced the capabilities of their ad serving technology, using it for their network and licensing it to others. To clarify the Ad Network Watch, we include only impression counts (in column three) for ads delivered by the network into their respective collection of sites. Most of the vendors claim significantly higher impressions served each month, choosing to combine the counts of their …

Viral marketing is all the rage and has been so for some time. Everybody wants to do it. There are many good examples of successful viral marketing efforts. But one thing stands out. There are no good examples of companies who have successfully executed multiple winning viral marketing campaigns. Guerrilla marketing is another popular tactic. It can also be lower in out-of-pocket cost. But you get what you pay for. Yes, the results can be disproportionate to the investment, but this is a tactic that does not generally sustain a product by itself. Too many times, new advertisers with …

In June, the IAB, MSN, and DoubleClick held a joint press conference to unveil a group of separately conducted online branding studies. The results showed that advertisers can not only improve the position of their brand with Internet advertising, but simultaneously generate a residual, synergistic impact across all marketing channels. Admittedly focused on the IAB goal of “fostering the use and acceptance of interactive advertising,” the studies claimed ad effectiveness improvement with varying results based on size, shape, placement, technique, and strength of the creativity. The IAB study, conducted by Dynamic Logic, found that larger ad units are 25 …

In the mid ’90s, as traditional advertising agencies realized the marketing and advertising power of the Internet for their clients, they generally took two approaches to deal with this new medium. They either bought or merged with an interactive specialist, or they formed a standalone, interactive department of their own. Deutsch took the latter approach and is happy with the results. Founded in 1969, Deutsch is a $1.7 billion full-service marketing and communications agency with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The agency has over 840 employees and offers clients an array of integrated services including Advertising, …

Marketers who fail to capitalize on the weapons of our times undoubtedly will find themselves buried deep in digital dust. If your business—the business of advertising, the art and science of connecting people and brands and media—is still your business, and if you’re committed to take full advantage of what will work, then the fundamental structure of how and where you spend your marketing dollars has to change. Because not only can you reach people whose use of the Internet may be displacing their consumption of other media, you can also reach them in new contexts, using the latest technologies. …

One would think computer companies might buck the trend and maintain high online ad spending, since they are the gateway to the online world. But “the spending levels for most manufacturers are down,” says Michael Kubin, co-CEO of Evaliant Media Resources (formerly Leading Web Advertisers). “Acer is down a huge amount and Gateway and IBM could be down by half,” he says. The other big spenders have been flat, with Compaq up a little, he notes. Evaliant data reveals Dell was the leading spender last year at $11.1 million. Through May of this year the company spent about $4 …

Millions use instant messaging to chat with friends; now the technology has a commercial application and is on the verge of becoming a new online ad format. ActiveBuddy, a year-old Silicon Alley startup, funded by Reuters and others, has developed interactive agents, or bots, that deliver content via instant messengers. Companies that sponsor them can become “buddies” and chat with potential customers, providing them with product information and linking them to websites where they can sell them products. Users enter company names on their buddy lists, call them up with the click of a mouse, and converse with them. …

You should know before we begin that I am not—nor have I ever been—an online media buyer. And for reasons that will become quite evident, it is unlikely I’ll ever be one. That will not deter me from stating what I might do if today some renegade agency were to deem me worthy of such a lofty pursuit. As I stroll through the carnage of the post-crash web, I see great content on quality sites otherwise littered with low-cost, highly obnoxious CPA banners. These advertisers add no value to the sites where their ads appear—no one benefits but the …

We've all seen the numbers: According to a recent Aberdeen Group report, email marketing grew by more than 270 percent over the past two years. Spending on email marketing is expected to rise from $2 billion this year to over $4 billion in 2003. Experience with this new direct-response vehicle is yielding a variety of tips for successful implementation, including: Don't spam, Target wisely, Personalize your message, Be innovative and compelling, Keep it short and simple, Be timely, Provide value, Include links, Manage responses, Follow through, Track and analyze results. Below is the first of five stories in …