Marketing

Imagine a world in which you could walk in your office in the morning and see a stoplight. Green would mean your company's image on the Web was favorable, yellow would mean neutral, and red would mean big trouble -- like one of your customers had just blogged that your product obliterates hard drive...

Firing a potentially powerful salvo in the online music war, Universal Music Group said it would make its entire catalog of music available for free download using an ad-supported approach that could pose one of the most significant threats yet to the dominance of Apple's iTunes Music Store. Univers...

eBay said Monday it had signed a multiyear pact with Google to have the search giant deliver ads, including click-to-call functionality, for its auction and e-commerce sites outside the United States. The contract calls for Google to do at international sites what Yahoo earlier this year won the rig...

CBS is hoping an innovative approach will ignite excitement in its fall TV lineup. The television network is planning to use Bluetooth technology to beam clips of the new shows from billboards to the mobile devices of passersby. Starting in September, billboards located in New York City's Grand Cen...

Persuading a company's brass to buy tools to analyze Web traffic is an easy sell these days, but that's not the case when it comes to hiring bodies to interpret the data produced by the tools. Those were among the findings in a report released last week by Forrester Research. "Because Web analytics ...

To accommodate the increased use of rich media ads by online marketers, Nielsen//NetRatings is modifying its media intelligence service, AdRelevance. "Clients can now take apart ads that specifically contain video elements," AdRelevance Product Manager Sally Krumholz told the E-Commerce Times. "They...

In the Web search world at least, the rich may continue to get richer. Google said late Monday it had signed a US$900 million deal to become the exclusive search provider for social networking giant MySpace.com and other Web properties owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, beating out its major riva...

Hoping to boost advertiser confidence in the interactive marketing industry, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said it would form a working group to create click fraud prevention guidelines. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Ask.com are among the companies that have already agreed to participate in the ...

Google on Wednesday announced a deal with XM Satellite Radio to help the Internet search giant's advertisers automatically place ads on the satellite radio's non-music radio channels. The deal gives Google advertisers a means to reach XM's more than 7 million subscribers. XM could benefit from offer...

As an Arkansas judge considers whether to give his final approval for a settlement in a high-profile suit against Google alleging widespread click fraud, a group of plaintiffs is trying to block the deal, saying the search engine has not done enough to stop the deception. Attorneys for some plaintif...

E-mail marketers at Time saw a significant increase in the effectiveness of their campaigns when testing a delivery system that certifies the origin of electronic messages. The system, Goodmail, is designed to create a trusted class of bulk e-mail that won't be hampered by spam filters imposed by In...

Seeking to help quantify the Web's impact on the problem of childhood obesity, the Kaiser Family Foundation said in a report issued Wednesday that many top food producers are using the Web to target children with powerful brand messages. In a report titled "It's Child's Play: Advergaming and the Onl...

As personal technology goes, Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) are more than just a replacement for tape-based VCRs: They're a boon to TV watchers and the enemy of the traditional 30-second television advertising spot, for decades the single most powerful and lucrative form of brand advertising. Device...

Reaching the Millennial Generation -- a label nailed to nine- to 28-year-olds, a group which, at some 79 million in the United States, is larger than the Baby Boomers -- poses some real challenges for marketers, especially marketers entrenched in their mass media ways. "The key thing to recognize wh...

In the early days of the Web, smart small Internet businesses could compete with just about anyone by working to make sure their Web pages were found first on search engines. Fast forward 10 years. Search engines have become increasingly sophisticated. Paid search listings have exploded into the pic...