Hollywood embraces the Web as a marketing vehicle.

To reposition itself in a tough advertising climate, this small online agency went back to its direct-marketing roots. After years of prosperity, Mass Transit Interactive, like many small New York City based online advertising agencies, was finding it hard to survive and grow in a tough advertising economy. So cofounders Jason Heller and Jason Burnham decided to get back to their direct marketing roots and reposition the company. Today, Mass Transit is positioned as a “Brand Response” interactive marketing firm that focuses mainly on media planning, buying, and management, but with a third of its business now engaged in …

The giant retailer has changed its online business model several times, but has also learned valuable lessons along the way. It’s tough to imagine how Kmart, the third largest retailer in the U.S., a granddaddy of mass-retailing with more than 2,100 super-center outlets serving all 50 states, the Caribbean Islands, and Asia Pacific, could fail with its first foray into the online world. After all, roughly 85 percent of this country’s population lives within 15 minutes of a Kmart store, and the company mails roughly 70 million advertising circulars each week. If you can’t drive traffic with these kinds of …

I guess it’s time to make my predictions for 2002. I really don’t sound too enthusiastic, do I? The truth is, there really isn’t that much to predict for 2002. The big movements on the Internet are pretty much over, at least for next year. Next year is a period of refinement, consolidation, and clean-up. So rather than 2002 predictions, these are more like 2002 predilections. Email. The big question for 2002 is: What is going to happen with email? This is one of those subjects that the email guys feel a bit ambivalent about: No one wants to …

If truth is the first casualty of war, then let us mourn the death of truth in tracking e-commerce. To be clear about who’s at war: the media are in combat with one another. In a shrinking economy, and particularly a shrinking media economy, each of the media is at war with one other for the clients’ ad dollars. Envision wild animals forced to share a drinking hole, one that is evaporating in a drought. Do you think they’re going to be nice to each other? Heck, no. It’s survival of the strongest, and meanest, and craftiest. Everyone else …

StreamingTalk about the Weather by Ken Liebeskind, MediaPost Staff Writer Whether planning a military operation or a trip to the mall, getting an up-to-the-minute weather report can be vital. Streaming weather content can be found in many places on the web, including on newspaper sites. But Weather.com and Accuweather.com are among the biggest players, drawing on their extensive resources—the Weather Channel’s cable network and the Accuweather forecasts distributed to TV and radio stations and newspapers. The sites provide “on-demand weather forecasts for any place in the world whenever you want it,” says Jay Mathieu, strategic media project manager …

Pop-up ads are ‘pretty distracting and offensive. They deliver a good message but there’s a better way to get the message across without upsetting surfers,’ says Brian Hunter, chief operating officer of ExitExchange. The company’s solution: OrbitAds, which don't really pop up, but pop under, appearing as full-page ads after a user leaves a website. “They convert exit traffic into valuable advertising for members,” Hunter says. OrbitAds are delivered through Windows management system software that automatically codes and serves a member’s ad after a user leaves a website. Unlike pop-up ads, OrbitAds play after a user surfs …

MindShareDesign.com (formerly Postmastergeneral.com) is the site of MindShare Design, a San Francisco company founded in 1996 that provides opt-in email management and delivery services. MindShare developed the PMG Service, which provides list owners with handling and delivery of their high-volume, opt-in email marketing campaigns. Under the PMG Service umbrella are PMG Standard, Pro, and—50 The PMG Service is web-based, so there is no software to install; the entire service runs on MindShare’s servers. PMG users can manage their databases and schedule deliveries all on the MindShare website. Click-through rates and tracking reporting are also …

There are three letters that send many people in this industry into a tizzy: C-P-A. CPA stands for cost-per-action and is just another way to define affiliate marketing. CPA is not the most loved and admired pricing form for publishers, since it places more responsibility, and more importantly, greater risk on the publishers (they don’t get paid unless the advertiser gets a lead). Commission Junction (www.cj.com), a network founded in 1998 by Lex Sisney and Per Pettersen, focuses entirely on this pricing structure. Advertisers contact CJ, with hopes of driving traffic to their website. They place their creative in …

Despite the warnings, publicity, and detection systems, computer viruses still seem to be able to disrupt our ability to use the Internet seamlessly for work or other vital communications. If you’re a home user or you run a business out of your home, you probably didn’t experience much fallout from Code Red, which attacked vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s web serving software (and disrupted access here at MediaPost) in August. Keeping a home computer safe from viruses is as easy as going to a retail store or website and purchasing the latest virus utility. Most of you are probably familiar with …