It is a surprise to no one that the veneer of Internet advertising has developed some cracks. But what most people don’t realize yet is that those cracks are widening into a divide that will determine the future of online publishing. I call it the Rich Media Divide. Let’s face it: size matters. The traditional static 468x60 banner is just too small and limited a canvas to hang compelling marketing messages from. A recent study conducted by Eyetracking.com for CNET Networks found that CNET’s new 360x300 Macromedia Flash-based “Messaging Plus” units were viewed up to 8 times longer, that …

Is online advertising good for anything? When click-through rates started to plummet, a heated debate began over whether the whole notion of the Internet as a powerful direct-response medium had in fact been doomed from the start. Champions of online branding, like Dynamic Logic’s Jeffrey Graham, argue that like other advertising media, the Internet is primarily a branding medium. In presentations, Graham points to a pie chart showing the tiny 1 percent slice representing click-throughs and asks rhetorically whether the other 99 percent of online advertising is “wasted.” Of course not, Graham insists, but there is currently no way to …

In the shadow of Manhattan’s Flatiron district, the headquarters of a long-established insurance company stood for decades. If you’d peered through its grime-encrusted basement windows, you’d have seen dusty filing cabinets, miniature cities of cardboard boxes, loose files carelessly scattered, reams of colored paper, ancient mimeograph machines. Every once in a while a slow-moving employee would shift a pile of papers from one place to another and then shuffle out of view. A little more than a year ago, the wrecking crew came through, turning this old-economy, prime Silicon Alley spot into a tabula rasa for the new digital …

he growth of cross-media advertising with AOL Time-Warner and other companies has spurred media buying agencies to create separate divisions to handle it. The latest unit is the Cross Media Council from Universal McCann. The media-buying arm of McCann Erickson/New York has just created the division, which will be headed by Bill Cella, executive vice president, broadcast properties. The idea for the division originated a couple of years ago with a cross-media deal with Turner. “It was the first global deal ever put together, for 15 clients in Europe and Asia,” Cella says. The deal was the beginning of …

Real Media (www.realmedia.com) was founded in 1995 by Dave Morgan and Gil Beyda. An offspring of the PubliGroupe Company, one of the oldest media service organizations in the world, Real Media is one of the largest online ad networks in the industry. Real Media is composed of two distinct networks, The Real Media Portfolio and the iCover Network. The Real Media Portfolio contains popular branded websites such as conducent.com, investors.com and eudora.com, while the iCover Network consists of smaller websites and their remnant inventory. If you’re looking to target a specific audience, the Real Media Portfolio is your choice. …

Streaming media is everywhere now, even in our email. Through streaming media, one can listen to the radio, watch a show or video, and now more than ever, advertise. Here are a few of the best sites out there for streaming media technology. Broadcast.com, brainchild of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, brings its visitors just about everything they could want when it comes to entertainment and information. Since its merger with Net Events, Broadcast.com now appears as Yahoo! Events, but that has simply made the site even bigger. Broadcast.com has 10 categories to choose from, allowing for both radio …

In some respects, JackStreet.com’s BuzzBox is an archetypical future tool. Its design anticipates further proliferation of broadband technology in homes and businesses, so the optimum version of BuzzBox will not roll out in significant numbers for some months. The BuzzBox differs from other on-screen pop-up devices in that it can feature infomercial-style interviews with vendors of products and services. As the key tool in the newly launched Buzzcasting Network, the 400 x 500 pixel BuzzBox is configured to deliver either audio-only or audio-video promotions. There are three basic versions, two of which work well over a typical 56k modem …

Seeing how this is our anniversary issue, I suppose I should follow tradition and look back on the last year. But that is a dangerous task. This last year has been such an emotional roller coaster for everyone in this industry that a recap might depress some of our readers. Well, maybe not. At this time last year, I was proudly holding up the very first issue of this magazine, posing for a picture with RuPaul at a WebAttack party (the pattern of his dress matched our cover), surrounded by the stereotypical black turtleneck-clad Internet enthusiasts sipping champagne. Those …