The agency is staffed by experienced people who actually like planning, buying, and analyzing media. Established in the fall of 1996 in its founder’s basement on 7th avenue in San Francisco, Exile on 7th, then called McMahon & Partners, opened their doors with two clients: Bank of America and Amazon.com. One was a 92-year-old “old economy” stalwart hoping to learn something about this potential new media called the web, and the other a “new economy” start-up little over a year old that grew to symbolize all the promises of a brave new world existing in cyberspace. Michael McMahon, the …

Its Atlas DMT serving technology enables the firm to excel with a data-driven approach to online planning and buying. Avenue A was founded in 1997 and quickly became one of the largest online media buying and planning agencies in the world. With a commitment to rigorous database-marketing methodologies and the development of a proprietary ad-serving and data-management technology, Avenue A was able to position itself of one of the big names in online advertising. With their “sperm-to-worm” view of online advertising and the data generated from it, Avenue A has built a client list that looks more like it …

The firm whose first eight employees were all engineers turns banners (and other units) into interactive high art. Imagine sitting at your computer while you are surfing the web at work. You are staring at your screen, trying desperately to sink a golf ball at or under par. Actually, you’re playing nine holes of miniature golf within the confines of a 468x60 banner. This was how many people first came across Freestyle Interactive’s work, in 1999. It was an amazing Java-based creative unit meant to work strictly as part of a branding campaign. To this day, it stands as one …

From 1995 to last year’s BMWfilms, they’ve been bringing great creative—and big clients—to interactive media. When you think of Fallon, you don’t think “interactive agency.” You think of a traditional shop. And that is what Fallon is. Founded originally as Fallon McElligot in America’s heartland in 1981, they quickly became one of the countries most-recognized creative powerhouses and brand-builders, doing work for such clients as United Airlines, Time Magazine, Holiday Inn, and even MTV. Their first foray into the interactive media was in 1995 for Magnavox, Ameritech, BMW, and Purina. It was rare for an agency in the offline …

For what lies ahead, the best interactive agency turns out to be the best-integrated one. It is one of the best-known advertising agencies in the world. It is the Grand Dame of shops, the Gray Lady of advertising. Some of the world’s best-known and enduring branding icons and tag lines were borne from this agency like Athena from the forehead of Zeus: A herd of bulls running through Merrill Lynch; the mustachioed Schweppes man; the perennial Pepperidge Farm’s horse-drawn white wagon. They work with some of the biggest, most recognized brands in the world: IBM, Coca-Cola, Shell, and American …

‘We see the ‘e’ in media” has been MEDIA Magazine’s tagline since its inception almost two years ago. Not only does it mean we see the electronic or interactive possibilities of the media industry, but we also see the excellence in work that interactive agencies are striving for in the online advertising marketplace. And with the challenges facing our young industry, we thought it was important to formally acknowledge the excellence of several agencies with MEDIA Magazine’s first ever gold, silver, and bronze “e” awards for Best Interactive Agencies of 2001. We asked MediaDarwin President Jim Meskauskas, in his …

In order to name the best online publishers in ten different categories, we had to decide what an online publisher was. First, know that we limited our selections to the more than 8,000 ad-supported websites, since they are the ones of interest to MEDIA Magazine’s readership of online planners and buyers. Naturally, you’d expect to find the big-name offline (read: old-line) publishers with web franchises—the newspaper, magazine, and entertainment conglomerates. Then there are the newly established Internet brands, principally the portals and search engines (it’s getting hard to tell them apart, as they acquire or morph into one another). We’ve …

Founded in 1998, Penn Media isn’t a rep firm or list broker; it publishes and aggregates email newsletters. Penn serves more than 62 million opt-in subscribers via 937 publications—85 of which are owned and operated by Penn itself and represent 10 million subscribers. Readers sign up to receive specific content in 13 categories (including sports, technology, humor, entertainment, and family) and then double opt-in. After the initial opt-in, subscribers receive a confirmation email that they must also respond to in order to complete the process. This prevents someone who knows your email address from signing you up. Penn …

I/PRO report highlights how advertisers evaluate media and what it will take for the Web to command more ad dollars. In large part, the success of the commercial Web lies in the hands of advertisers, says Internet Profiles Corporation (I/PRO), which recently commissioned IntelliSurvey to conduct a survey to help understand what fuels the demand for online advertising — and where its biggest failings are. According to the resulting report, titled "Assessing Measurement Systems Online and Off," both online and offline advertisers (including Internet, print, radio, and TV) found the Internet to be a less effective vehicle than the others, …

For hard liquor advertisers, the Internet is a whole new way of marketing. Log on to Playboy.com and before you can get inside the site, you’re likely to see a full-screen Flash ad featuring Playboy founder Hugh Hefner talking about the “finer things in life” — his famous mansion, limousine, private plane, about a dozen beautiful women, and, of course, Jack Daniel’s. For hard liquor advertisers, who have been booted from network television recently, it is the Internet that’s proving to be one of the finer things in life. They are rushing to advertise on the Web in …