I was pleased to hear that the IAB had just announced Email Data Management Best Practices, but after reading the document, I was somewhat disappointed disappointed with what I found regarding data-sharing. The sharing of email addresses with multiple marketing companies for the purpose of sending multiple email messages from different senders is simply not a best practice.

If you're a digital marketer working in the world of online advertising, you know that the majority of an operations team's efforts go into ad trafficking, which involves campaign execution , setup, optimization and reporting. In fact, an average of two-thirds of the employees on a given account team are responsible for this aspect of the work, while just one third handle the higher-level tasks of a campaign's strategy and creative. With so many employees needed to support a relatively low-level function, digital marketers often find it difficult to maximize ROI and scale their business efficiently.

Given limited budgets and a universal desire to be more green, virtual events are getting a lot of buzz as of late. But, do they offer the same lead generation potential as in-person events? The answer is yes and no. Yes, they can generate significant leads and no, they don't deliver the same marketing potential as in-person events - they deliver MORE. For example, Quest Software reports its first virtual event generated $23 per lead in return on investment (ROI), which is significantly less than its previous in-person events. As a professional marketer, you know that $23 per lead …

Although energy prices have slightly decreased recently, consumer concern about the economy is still on the rise - as well as their increased usage of coupons. In June, the Wall Street Journal ran a MarketWatch article, "Surfing the Web to Save on Food." The article discussed a recent Hitwise study which found visits to coupon Web sites increased 56% for the week ended June 6, in comparison to the same week in 2007. This study was done when gas prices hit the seemingly astronomical $4 mark. The Energy Information Administration now states that the average U.S. retail gasoline price is …

I've been writing columns for a number of years now on the state of the online lead generation space. One of the things that strikes me, in the nine years I've been in this space (now THAT is a frightening thought), is that not a whole lot has changed at the core. Sure, there have been outwardly facing changes -- we had "data collection," "data dumping," etc. --that just led to massive amounts of spamming. Now consumers have managed to manage their spam, and email is as strong as ever. Different, but stronger.

Every time a library adds new books to its collection, the old books aren't thrown away or forgotten. It's the volume of books within a library's collection that help the library maintain the repeat traffic in and out of its doors -- not just the newest titles added to its collection this week. Sure, maybe the new books get prominent placement at the front desk as "recent additions," but it's the vast nature of a library's holdings that makes people come back. Just as a library drives foot traffic, online publishers should be looking to apply the same principles to …

The controversies surrounding ad networks have been at the top of the news this year. Now, they are migrating from the CPM/display world to the realm of cost-per-lead advertising. However, the issues are different. In display, much of the furor concerns whether publishers are wise to allocate inventory to third parties where there is a loss of control. But in cost per lead, the concern is in another direction: lead quality. And the answer is transparency.

Last year will long be remembered as a pivotal one in the online lead generation category. This spring marked the one-year anniversary of the FTC's wake-up call to the industry in the form of a formal investigation into the use of the word "free" in lead-gen ads. This piece, however, isn't really about the investigations or settlements per se; we all know they've received considerable media coverage and commentary over the last twelve or so months. Rather, the story I'm interested in telling is about how our industry united under these trying circumstances and took action to ensure the long-term …

While news exclusives can attract new audiences and help a site grow, advertising exclusives are bad news for online publishers. When it comes to online advertising, publishers need to be like the manager of a football team before draft season: they need to keep their options as open as possible.

Understanding the correlation between the successes of one media type over another can be a challenge. With many case studies under my belt, I can say, however, that there is a proven connection between CPM successes when a performance-based pricing model is implemented during the same time.