Hollywood Embraces the Web The look of fear on Jody Foster’s face was palpable. And if you were one of the estimated 130 million Web surfers who ventured onto the Yahoo! network in March, it was hard to miss images from Foster’s current motion picture, Panic Room. The Sony Pictures Entertainment production, the object of one of the heaviest movie promotions ever on the Internet, roared into theaters March 29 to the biggest Easter Weekend opening on record. "We employed some pretty sophisticated tactics to monitor buzz throughout the Web," says Dwight Caines, vice president of Internet marketing …

StreamingFlash Flood by Ken Liebeskind It’s easier than you think to run your TV commercials on the Internet. Maybe you’ve seen those press releases from companies such as PepsiCo touting the online debut of the company’s latest spot. Pssst — Pepsi’s just making it look hard. In fact, commercials are getting easier and easier to stream onto the Internet, and perhaps just as importantly, they can be streamed into almost any new ad-size unit available. That includes standard banners, skyscrapers, and even email. Atlanta-based Eye Wonder, which touts itself as a provider of "instant streaming," claims that …

Streaming media usage is on the rise, and recent reports show advertisers may soon sign on. Despite ever-present controversies over digital rights fees, consumers continue to use streaming media in record numbers, and the projections for this emerging medium, though restricted by a lack of standards and low broadband penetration, represent a significant opportunity for marketers. Approximately 80 million Americans across all ages reported having accessed audio or video online. Moreover, even as the response to “annoying” banners continue to decline, over 40 million Americans (17 percent) listen to audio or watch video online in a typical month, …

Moderator: Tig Tillinghast, Online Spin Contributing Writer: In some recent columns, I brought up several categories of ethical dilemmas facing marketers today. These range from tough choices on what kinds of clients to turn down all the way to outright illegal stuff. Many readers wrote me back telling their own stories, and an interesting theme began to come out of the sum of those responses. Many seemed to believe that in their firm, and maybe in the whole industry, people didn’t feel as if they were supported in making what they felt was the right choice. Of course there were …

NetRatings decided not to acquire Jupiter Media Metrix, leaving JMM’s future in doubt and agencies still searching for standards. The termination of the merger agreement between NetRatings and Jupiter Media Metrix has left the Internet media measurement industry in a flux. Will JMM be acquired by someone else? Will it go out of business? Will NetRatings acquire ERatings and become the dominant player? These are some of the questions being asked as the situation plays out. The acquisition agreement, reached in October, was scuttled in February due to opposition from the Federal Trade Commission. In a brief interview with …

Often the forgotten metric, session lengths could become as important to media buyers as impressions when selecting websites. Since the early days of monitoring traffic on the web, one of the metrics that metering services have provided for sites and agencies is session length. Even the earliest PC Meter reports (the precursor to Media Metrix) had data points that indicated how much time a user spent, on average, with a particular site. At first, no one was sure what to do with this information. To many, it was at best an interesting factoid. Then, for a brief …

The World Advertising Research Center has recently relaunched at www.WARC.com, and if you’ve ever needed to find an obscure stat — such as ad spending by medium in Zimbabwe for the first quarter of 2001 — this is the site for you. The WARC, an independent organization based in the U.K., has been serving the needs of the global marketing, advertising, media, and research communities for more than 40 years. Its new website offers more than 15,000 articles, case studies, and research and conference papers, as well as ad spending statistics and demographic and economic data drawn from more …

Have you ever needed to find out quickly what the most popular online search terms were over a certain period of time? How do you know if your ad campaign generated any buzz? The number of search engine queries is a good barometer of the public’s interest in a given subject, and for advertisers, these stats may be valuable in deciding which sites to run their ads on. To that end, this month’s click picks may prove useful. Our first pick, Yahoo Buzz (http://buzz.yahoo.com), organizes its "buzz-worthy" topics by category (such as TV, music, sports, movies, and actors) or …

On March 3, the WB Network debuted No Boundaries – a reality show that is “a journey of more than 2,000 miles over wild, rugged terrain.” It’s also a journey for local Ford dealers, who are pursuing a new online advertising opportunity in association with the show. “It’s the first time anyone has taken web content from a show and put it on their site,” says Brett Belote, director of corporate development at G1440, the web development firm that created the program. “It allows interactive participation through site links with direct participation from advertisers, instead of separate sites for …

Streaming TV Spots StreamingTV Spots by Ken Liebeskind, MediaPost Staff Writer Despite the skepticism that surrounds repurposing traditional ad creative on the Internet, advertisers are beginning to stream more TV spots online. One of the reasons for this is improved technology. Much has been written about the difficulty of streaming video to users who don’t have broadband connections, but as some companies have figured out recently, broadband is not necessary. Two of those companies are EyeWonder and Klipmart, both of which use Java to stream video online, so that there is no media player required and no need …