B2B E-Mail Campaigns Get Clicks (eMarketer, August 31st)
Harte-Hanks reviewed 700 client e-mail campaigns and found that permission-based B2B e-mail campaigns of the 'general marketing' type can yield click-through rates as high as 25% when constructed and targeted well. The average CTR on general marketing distributions was a less-impressive 1.3%, with market research B2B mailings scoring a 4.1% average and sales promotion offers a 1.7% average.

Courting Customers Across Channels (ClickZ, August 30th)
Pamela Parker takes a look at new marketing mixes that are making the most of a multi-media society by tapping in to several channels with intertwining brand messages. As this article suggests through its analysis of Amex' sponsorship of the US Open, when consumers immerse themselves in your brand, it's game, set and match.

Effective Frequency For Online Advertising (australia.internet.com, August 30th)
Frequency exposure is one of the most important variables in advertising but the least controlled aspects of many online advertising campaigns. In large part this is because it is thought relatively unimportant to control the number of advertising exposures when definitive direct marketing measures like click rates are more powerful determinants of a campaign's success. As a result, exposures are literally thrown into the market, but only bought on clicks or right through to acquisition. But is this wise?

Search Engine Results You Can Control (ClickZ, August 29th)
Those unfamiliar with the many pay-for-placement systems offered by search firms these days are presented with a basic round-up of the options presented in this article by Tessa Wegert. Purchasing search engine listings gives a marketer greater control over placement, context and speed-of-execution than traditional algorithm-centric search engine optimization.

Overture, InfoSpace in it for the Long Haul (internet.com, August 29th)
Continuing the process of shoring up its distribution agreements for coming years, pay-for-performance search player Overture has announced that its deal with portal InfoSpace will continue until 2006.

UK Regulator Fines Firm for SMS Ad (internet.com, August 29th)
Wireless marketer Moby Monkey will be forced to pay up for an allegedly misleading campaign carried on the short-messaging service, as the threat for mobile spam grows.

Measurability of On- and Offline Marketing (eMarketer, August 27th)
A Reveries survey finds that only 3% of marketers believe online marketing is difficult to measure, whereas 34% say the same about mass-media advertising.

CMR: Web Ads Up From Last Year (internet.com, August 27th)
The online advertising industry might appear bleak at present, but it actually is faring better than last year at this time, according to ad researcher CMR. The New-York based firm has stated that its latest study reveals a 1.7% increase in online ad revenues during the first half of this year as compared to the same period one year prior.

DoubleClick Unveils List Management ASP (internet.com, August 27th)
Continuing to fashion itself as a one-stop-shop for buyers of online ad management and delivery technology, DoubleClick has debuted an outsourced list management service that integrates with its existing DARTmail offerings.

DoubleClick Settles with States On Profiling (internet.com, August 26th)
In further news out of the DoubleClick camp, the company has has settled with state attorneys over its use of cookies to track and target online consumers, effectively concluding one of the last challenges to its privacy policies. The terms of the settlement include payments made to the ten states who launched the complaint to cover legal costs and a consumer education program. The company also said that it would make access to its cookies available to individual consumers who may otherwise be skeptical of exactly how much data the tech firm is gleaning from one's web travels.

Web Sites Quench Thirst for Ads (Reuters, August 25th)
As user interactivity and choice continues to emerge as a positive, and in some ways unanticipated, result of the digital revolution, media players are increasingly observing their ads being zapped by TiVo and ad-blocker equipped consumers. On the flipside, some companies have found that consumers are willing to actively seek out their ads online - and even pay for the privilege of watching them in some cases - when the ad creatives are themselves entertaining or intriguing enough to command loyalty and interest. Could adver-tainment and advertising-on-demand be a significant step in the evolution of advertising?

Mailshell Adopts "Trusted Sender" Technology (internet.com, August 23rd)
In a step forward for the e-mail marketing industry's efforts at self-regulation, San Francisco-based anti-spam firm Mailshell has become the first e-mail filter to adopt the Postiva Trusted Sender technology.

Warner Bros. Unleashes New Potter Efforts (internet.com, August 22nd)
The studio looks to create an experience that woos new fans and encourages repeat visits to both their Potter-centric web properties, and to the theater. The second campaign borrows several elements from its predecessor, including multiple official websites, interactive games and, of course, substantial purchases of advertising inventory throughout AOL's online empire.

Short-Text Messaging May Get Boost as Political Ad Vehicle (The Washington Post, August 22nd)
Campaign 2002 may be coming to a cell phone near you. The Federal Election Commission is expected to decide Thursday whether groups should be allowed to deliver text-based political ads over mobile phones and other wireless devices without disclosing who paid for them. Update: The decision is in, and causing ripples throughout the industry. The Federal Election Commission has given Target Wireless an exemption on disclaimers regarding political ads over SMS systems, in a move that could unleash a new wave of ad-supported, wireless content and create a new battlefield on which the anti-spam fight must continue. Read this Internet.com article for more on the decision. Information concerning the FEC's continued exploration of the issue may be found within this Internet.com article.

Interview: Online Advertising Beyond the US (eMarketer, August 22nd)
Harvey Goldhersz, CEO of Beyond Interactive, coordinates 26 global offices that accommodate clients on local, regional and international scales. Find out what constants hold true for e-advertising regardless of where you're doing business.

Post-L90, eUniverse Again Tries Network Sales Unit (internet.com, August 21st)
Web publisher eUniverse is looking to pick up where it left off after the abandoned buyout of L90 (now the recently-delisted MaxWorldwide - see below) by creating a new division to extend its ad network through wooing new affiliates and advertisers. The new unit, Performance Marketing Group, is intended to work with smaller Web publishers to carry ads from eUniverse's advertising clients, in return for a cut of the revenue.

A Year Later, X10 Still Going Strong (MSNBC, August 21st)
Just as the popup/popunder furor once again reaches fever pitch in the wake of EarthLink's decision to block the format for its ISP subscribers by default, MSNBC's Lisa Napoli takes a look at the year that has been for X10 - a company whose brand is inexplicably linked to its trademark popunder marketing efforts.

Reuters, Multex in Joint Ad Deal (internet.com, August 21st)
Continuing moves by rival publishers to work together in a tough economic climate, the move will see the two news publishers unite their sales forces in a bid to cross-sell inventory on the Web sites of each. This partnership comes just days after several major players in the market (CNET, NY Times, MarketWatch.com, weather.com and USA Today) announced a similar uneasy union.

MaxWorldwide Stock Delisted From Nasdaq Stock Market (Yahoo Finance, August 20th)
Less than a month after transitioning DoubleClick's former media clients under its arm, MaxWorldwide (formerly L90) has been delisted from the Nasdaq after failing to file its Form-10Q on time. The delay arose after the company's new auditor (PricewaterhouseCoopers who replaced Arthur Andersen following an SEC investigation into the company's revenue reports) found discrepancies remaining within the company's books. In the wake of the DoubleClick acquisition, MaxWorldwide had billed itself as the biggest independent online ad rep.

EarthLink to Block Pop-Ups, Promote Tool in New Ads (internet.com, August 19th)
Big news this one. The ISP will offer users an application that nixes pop-ups and pop-unders, and plans to highlight the service in its newest campaign. Not only is this decision alone a dramatic blow to publisher revenues (EarthLink holds an estimated 3-4% of the U.S. ISP market share), but has created very real fears that MSN and AOL may decide to follow suit in order to take away EarthLink's perceived competitive advantage. This officially brings ab-blocking into the mainstream, and is sure to ignite heated debate similar to that concerning the arrival of digital video recorders on the traditional media scene. A sampling of the issues to be raised in the debate with advertisers and publishers may be found within this popular Geek/Talk thread.

Bad Medicine (ClickZ, August 19th)
Who's the drug dealer? Unethical (if not downright illegal) pharmacies flourish on the Web - thanks to portals, search engines, and legitimate marketers happy to accept their money.

How Open Rate Really Works (ClickZ, August 16th)
What counts? What doesn't? What are the six pitfalls in measuring the open rate of your emails?

Equifax Buys Naviant (internet.com, August 15th)
The $135 million deal will create an e-marketing giant with extensive e-mail databases capable of targeting millions of consumers. Naviant, following its recent acquisitions of eDirect and 24/7 Real Media's email unit, is ripe with a database consisting of more than 100 million unique permission-based addresses and an enviable tech portfolio that the credit reporting giant will tap to grow its core business.

Pop-Up Warfare: Is Peace Possible? (ClickZ, August 15th)
ClickZ' Tessa Wegert responds to reader feedback concerning an earlier article by admitting that the popup ad format still draws ire from certain sections of the net using audience, despite the prevalance of the format and the fact that many, many content-based web properties rely on popups to keep them financially afloat. Many, though, see the ads as a necessary and fair exchange in return for free content, and consider that the real issue may be one of frequency, not format, as expressed in this follow-up article.

DoubleClick, IMS in Deal for Reach, Frequency (internet.com, August 14th)
In a move that illustrates online advertising's efforts to incorporate traditional media measurement standards, industry giant DoubleClick will integrate reach and frequency tools with its MediaVisor campaign management software. Under an agreement with VNU's Interactive Market Systems (IMS), the two companies will enable media planners to seamlessly transfer data between the MediaVisor tool and WebRF, a reach and frequency tool that IMS developed in conjunction with sister company Nielsen//NetRatings.

Yahoo!'s New Deal (TurboAds, August 14th)
This analysis comes one month after Yahoo! made the announcement that it would firm up its rich-media partnerships with third-party firms rather than work on developing an all-inclusive platform to manage in-house. It questions whether the decision will convey the right message to advertisers, while pondering the risks associated with making the media buying process more complex than what has been the case in the past.

Bigfoot Interactive Inks Pact with Japanese Giant (internet.com, August 13th)
The world's 13th largest company, Mitsui and Co., has taken a stake in, and formed a partnership with, the New York-based e-mail technology and services player. Only a rough indication as to the size of the investment was given (7-8 figures), and its scope involves both in-house use of the technology and a commitment from Mitsui to resell Bigfoot's services abroad.

Internet Not Sharing in Ad Industry Gains (CyberAtlas, August 12th)
Overall advertising spending for the first half of 2002 rose 2.3 percent over the same period last year, according to researcher Nielsen Monitor-Plus, but the online part of the business declined more than 8 percent. Mind you, syndicated TV revenues and national magazine ad sales also declined slightly over the year-ago period, suggesting that the continued weakness is not isolated to interactive advertising. The Online Publishers Association has responded to the report dismissively, suggesting that its members have seen significant year-over-year increases in ad revenues during the past quarter. Read more about their response here.

MSN Looks To Wireless Advertising (internet.com, August 12th)
Through a deal with wireless advertising startup Avesair, MSN moves to make mobile a more important part of its strategy. Avesair's technology tracks campaigns that are delivered through both SMS and WAP channels.

Teens Possess Purchasing Power (CyberAtlas, August 12th)
Perhaps daunted by technology, parents relinquish their consumer electronics buying decisions to the kids, or so would suggest the findings of this study by InsightExpress. The study also found that more teens learn of new electronic products from the internet than from television, magazines or schools, suggesting that the market is ripe for electronics manufacturers to targets teens online.

Lycos to Develop Own Paid Placement Listings (internet.com, August 12th)
Web portal Lycos is looking to join the paid listings flock in a move to boost its income from search. The company will turn to FindWhat.com for technology that will drive its transition to the support of an auction-style pay-per-click placement offering that will compete with the likes of Overture and Google AdWords.

Global Network Gunning for Patent Revenues (internet.com, August 9th)
Continuing the seemingly endless barrage of patent disputes within the online ad delivery realm, niche ad serving play Global Network is targeting advertisers, agencies, servers and newspaper site publishers in a licensing push after receiving a patent concerning the dynamic delivery of ad content over multiple online news properties.

Nielsen to Track TiVo Use (internet.com, August 8th)
Much as it has done in other new media, researcher Nielsen is to serve as a forerunner into the field of monitoring the impact that personal video recorders have on television watching, though full-fledged reporting presents greater difficulties, as noted in this article.

Why Nix Effective Formats? (ClickZ, August 8th)
We have very few truly proven ad formats online, and already publishers are abolishing them. This is the issue addressed by Tessa Wegert in this ClickZ article, which comments in particular on iVillage's mysterious decision to pull popups from their site. Of course, others still are applauding such decisions, which just goes to show that the rift between what readers want and what advertisers find effective remains.

The One EyeWonder of the Web (eMarketer, August 8th)
EyeWonder's video ads reportedly average 70% to 95% play-through rates, whether they appear in banners, pop-ups or e-mail. CEO John Vincent explains why Coke, American Express and others are using EyeWonder to build their brands.

Spyware, Pop-Ups, TiVo, and Spam (ClickZ, August 7th)
This article provides a succinct summary of the most sentient issues presently facing online advertising, and highlights the difficulties that come with any attempt to strike a balance between consumer desires, advertiser satisfaction and publisher profitability.

UK Accepts SMS Adverts (eMarketer, August 7th)
Once cellphone users experience SMS, they are willing to receive targeted ads in sizeable quantities, according to an Enpocket Insight study. Trusted sources score the highest favorability, and all types of SMS marketing rate higher than voice-based telesales.

Vivendi Consolidates on 24/7 Real Media (internet.com, August 7th)
Still gunning for profitability late this year, the struggling online ad technology provider continues its streak of wins. This time, the triumph comes from signing media giant Vivendi Universal to 24/7's OpenAdStream ad delivery platform. The company will manage the delivery of advertising content throughout Vivendi's entire portfolio of sites.

Compare & Contrast: Ad Guidelines At Overture & Google (SearchEngineWatch, August 5th)
Those new to paid placement listings might assume that it's anything goes. If you pay enough, you can come up tops for the terms you wish to target and with ads that say exactly what you want. The reality is that paid listings actually operate within a number of constraints. Here, SearchEngineWatch's Danny Sullivan highlights the differences between how Overture and Google manage listings to ensure relevance.

Lyris Acquires SparkLIST (internet.com, August 5th)
The move consolidates the popular email ASP with its technology provider and part owner. Lyris will now control SparkLIST in whole, in a bid to expand its list hosting business. SparkLIST, though, will continue operating under its own brand, and will function as a somewhat independent division within the parent company's architecture.

Wink, Experian in iTV Data Deal (internet.com, August 5th)
Wink Communications is teaming up with consumer data giant Experian to share information about television audiences who view interactive TV advertising and programming. The data contains geographic and demographic information on the 5.5 million households equipped with Wink-supported set-top boxes.

Study: Auto Companies Like Rich Media (CyberAtlas, August 5th)
Automakers buy 10 times the rich media impressions than other industries, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which automakers topped the rich-media buying chart, and seems to lends credence to claims that meb media - and rich-media creatives in particular - can build and enhance brands effectively.

E-Mail Does Branding Right (eMarketer, August 4th)
US marketers say building brand awareness is the number one goal of their online advertising initiatives. How is branding happening? Check your inbox.

R U Ready 4 SMS Mktg? (ClickZ, August 2nd)
Short on words, high on impact. Is SMS marketing the way to engage the cool, the blase, the been-there-seen-that early adopters? This ClickZ feature looks at some of the early successes to embrace the medium, while cautioning that campaigns must remain both creative and enticing, and their management ethical in order to best maximize one's chance of success. Immoral practices, such as engaging in mobile spamming, though, are feared by legitimate marketers and consumers alike who have each seen email degenerate into a frustrating medium of late due to runaway abuse. Researchers suggest that the U.S. mobile marketing industry will rival those of earlier-adopters Europe and Asia by 2006, as noted in this article.

Solicitors Slam Sprint's Spam Strategy (internet.com, August 2nd)
The carrier finds itself in a heap of trouble over unsolicited e-mails in the state of Utah. The bill's $21,750 so far and growing by the day if Sprint loses a class action lawsuit. In related news, the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday proposed fining privately held Fax.com $5.38 million for sending unsolicited advertisements via facsimile machines, the largest fine by the agency for such a violation. For more on that, see this article from SiliconValley.com.

Ohio Governor Signs Anti-Spam Law (internet.com, August 2nd)
The cost of violating anti-spam laws is rising, with Ohio joining the ranks of states banning unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail and affording consumers and Internet Service Providers the right to sue. The law allows Internet subscribers to sue spammers for up to $50,000 plus costs, and allows ISPs to sue for up to $500,000 per incursion. Meanwhile, the market for anti-spam programs continues to grow along the cynically symbiotic lines of the virus writer:anti-virus vendor relationship. For more on the latest in that market, see this Seattle Times article.

AOL Revving Up for Rich Media Ad Dollars (internet.com, August 1st)
Just days after announcing that the newest versions of its popular instant messaging and email applications would be 'enhanced' by the ability to support a plethora of rich-media ad formats, AOL has brought the plan to fruition in the announcement today that version 8 of its proprietary software will serve as a solid rich-media advertising platform.

Interview: TechTarget's Targeted Advertising (eMarketer, August 1st)
TechTarget remains committed to an ad-supported model, and it's paying off. eMarketer speaks with the CEO of a company set to grow by 70% this year as it finds success with banners, e-mail, webcasts, conferences and even a print magazine.