Want to know why a rival is racking up more traffic and hits than you are? Who doesn't? Hitwise, the provider of online competitive intelligence, recently upgraded its keyword research tool to enable marketers and their agency partners to get more valuable real-time intelligence. Dubbed Search Intelligence Version 3.0, the tool was upgraded to help marketers immediately identify new search terms that have proven successful in attracting customers to competitors' Web sites. The enhanced tool enables online marketers to more easily upload their portfolio of search terms while at the same time running gap analysis reports between their current …

Google makes the complicated simple and the arcane accessible. And as it did so well with search, the company has set its sights on the world of Web analytics. The recently launched Google Analytics, formerly a stand-alone product from Urchin which was acquired by Google, offers free tools for which advertisers and media planners once paid thousands of dollars a year. Google Analytics tracks and analyzes site traffic by installing simple codes on a Web site, giving publishers and advertisers the ability to analyze where customers are coming from and what they're doing on the site once they get …

E-mail, online's original "killer app," has lost some of its luster in recent years, tarnished by the sleazy practices of spammers, "phishers," and other scam artists looking to make a quick buck. However, Opt-Intelligence is betting that e-mail's finest days lie ahead. "We're trying to do for opt-in e-mail what Google and Overture did for search," says Dan Felter, the company's CEO. "We want to make it a high-quality experience for both consumers and advertisers." The firm recently debuted a new opt-in co-registration network targeted at Web sites that use registration forms. After users complete forms on a participating …

San Francisco-based Aptimus runs an ad network that provides sales leads for its clients, which include Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and several educational institutions. The company's primary technology, Dynamic Revenue Optimization, is designed to consistently move advertiser offers to Web sites that generate the most qualified leads. Aptimus CEO Tim Choate compares it to building a giant system to capture permission slips for contacting consumers interested in an offer. The company generated around $15 million in revenue in 2005 after a restructuring that forced it to cancel relationships with several publishers due to spiraling cost-per-thousand prices. Most of …

Now salespeople can seal the deal faster than ever before, thanks to a unique new Web-based communication tool. Webisodes are designed to enable a client's customers to see the benefits of a product or service. Created by Chicago-based Symmetri Marketing Group, the Webisodes are currently featured on specially designed micro-sites for business-to-business clients, including Motorola. "Creating awareness is always important, but there is so much more to the overall buying process," says Carl Triemstra, president of Symmetri Marketing Group and former managing director for Leo Burnett's Technology Group's Chicago office. Motorola's two-minute Webisode shows police and firefighters …

Lionhead Studios has released a new tool that enables video gamers to create their own machinima. Say what? Machinima is filmmaking within a real-time virtual environment, often using 3-D video game technologies. Essentially, gamers can produce their own movies by manipulating the characters in video games, then exporting and uploading the films to the Web. Marketers have begun placing ads against machinima, and not just video game and entertainment advertisers, either. Heavy.com, a site that produces original machinima, boasts sponsorships from Sony, Unilever's Axe, Burger King, Coca-Cola, and Diesel. The Lionhead tool "The Movies" positions the player …

On the Web, even small dot-coms can operate like giants, as is proven by the likes of Golfserv.com and Petfinder.com. Though small, their content and ads are accessed by millions, and they offer attractive audiences for blue-chip advertisers like United Airlines and Cadillac (on Golfserv), and Purina and Petco (on Petfinder). So when both companies needed an ad server, they turned to AdJuggler Enterprise 5.1, from Thruport Technologies. "When you have a huge company spending six figures with you, you need to be able to tell them how their campaign is going. AdJuggler allows us to watch them daily," …

Back in the day, Judy Albert of Seattle was known for her famous "little green book," filled with her favorite local businesses. Friends and family often referred to the book for Judy's sought-after recommendations. These days, Judy's Book, Inc. is shaking up local advertising by connecting consumers to merchants through word-of-mouth referrals. The two-year-old company follows the motto that people will trust one another more than they do advertising. "The market is telling us that our unique approach, combining honest reviews by real people with detailed information about local businesses, is the future of local advertising," explains …

Online buzz marketing practitioners owe it to potential campaign targets, not to mention clients, to fully and frequently disclose their relationship with the company whose products or services they're hawking. While this would seem to be an obvious ethical caveat, the folks at Boston-based BzzAgent have clarified their disclosure policies to ensure that there's no room for misinterpretation among their 120,000 volunteer "agents." BzzAgent is also calling on peers to similarly fortify their guidelines. "There should be an upfront statement along the lines of 'I'm a volunteer, I received this product as part of a program,' " says BzzAgent …

Call me a purist, but my conception of online and PC-based video gaming doesn't include bad weather so much as it does aliens, bazookas, and mercilessly pimped-out Aston Martins. So it was with great consternation that I checked out the pair of weather-centric online games created by Skyworks Technologies and The Weather Channel Interactive. Don't get me wrong -- I prefer mucking around in a four-wheeler, as experienced in The Weather Channel Driving Game, and cracking nine irons into a stiff gale in The Weather Channel Golf Game, to actual work. And I'm willing to take the designers at …