When I start considering vehicles for a media plan, I like to take myself through an exercise. I draw concentric circles on a white board and categorize my vehicles according to four variables: target, time, place and manner. As I continue to consider vehicles, I place them into the various rings of the concentric circles based on their ability to synch up with those four variables. Some vehicles might hit the right types of people, but not necessarily at the right time. Others might get to the right people at the right time, but in content that's not relevant. …

Every few years there comes a new mantra in business. One of the most memorable is "Greed Is Good." This Wall Street quote seemed to epitomize the ’80s, and was briefly resurrected in the ’90s by the dot-com boom, but now it would appear that a shift has occurred — we've moved from greed to accountability. As consumers continue to be bombarded with marketing messages each day, how can any responsible company continue to spend excessive amounts of dollars with no true read on the effectiveness of those expenditures? If the Internet bubble can burst and not return, what makes …

I’d like to suggest changing the official motto of the United States from "E pluribus unum" to "Supersize it!" I realize this will take an act of Congress, but I feel the arguments for such a change are strong. No other phrase says more about our culture and the media that drives our national zeitgeist, and the fact that it was created by a fast-food chain is just icing on the cake — or ketchup on the processed meat patty, if you prefer. Sad but true, all Americans know what "Supersize it" means, while relatively few know that the …

CRMMore Than An Acronymby Amy Corr, amyc@mediapost.com Long gone are the days when you could get by with only "RON," "CPC," and "CPA" in your online advertising acronym repertoire. Today, everyone who’s anyone is talking about CRM. But, as a recent survey shows, not everyone understands the true meaning of the acronym. So what exactly is CRM? Resource marketing company Reveries recently found that advertising professionals think the acronym stands for everything from Customer Relationship Management to Customer Relationship Marketing, Continuous Retention Marketing, Customer Retention Management, and the list goes on. Which is it? Reveries says …

It may be sizable overseas, but the U.S. wireless advertising industry is still microscopic, and any hopes of growth could be in danger of suffocation by cell phone spam. Already existing SMSs (short messaging systems) allow short text messages of up to 140 characters to be transmitted to cellular devices, and unfortunately, some companies are beginning to take advantage of the technology. Acacia National Mortgage is one company that sends out unsolicited text ads to large blocks of cell phone numbers. Many consider these ads cell phone spam, but Acacia President Jerry Youhanaie stands behind his methods, saying that government …

eCreativeSearch (part of the FastChannel Network) is a massive database consisting of more than 22,000 TV commercials, music videos, and movie trailers, with agency, director, and production contacts listed alongside. There are three ways to search the database (SpotSearch, DirectorSearch, and ResourceSearch), and each main categorical search is then broken down into four mini-categories, so the information is not overwhelming to viewers. SpotSearch allows visitors to search for ads, trailers, and videos alphabetically or by keyword, product category, company, or even by recent events such as the Clio Awards and the Cannes Film Festival. DirectorSearch enables visitors to search …

For MaxWorldwide (the ad network formally known as L90), the past few months have been busy. Not only did the company purchase DoubleClick’s media business, realizing DoubleClick’s dream to be known as a pure play technology company, it also moved the company headquarters from California to New York and "removed employees that handled accounts questionably in the past," as Mitchell Cannold, the new President and CEO of MaxWorldwide, puts it. As a result, Cannold says, they’ve succeeded in bringing together two struggling companies and made them into the largest ad network out there, with little client overlap. Despite …

When NetRatings and Jupiter Media Metrix had their proposed merger kiboshed by federal regulators a few months ago, many were unsure of what would happen to the suite of useful services JMM used to offer. One was AdRelevance, which is now safe in the arms of NetRatings. The other was AiM, a site profiler tool, which passed into the hands of comScore in the beginning of June as part of comScore’s $1.5 million acquisition of JMM’s remains. AiM allows planners and buyers to determine which sites index highest among all sorts of behavioral, psychographic, and demographic factors. In …