Marketing

E-mail marketers anxious to see that their opt-in mailings are not mistaken for spam are finally seeing brighter days, new research suggests. While the journey to the customer's inbox is getting easier, however, passive marketers will face tough challenges from smart competitors who are quickly lear...

Google continues to tinker with the concept of monetizing its popular maps feature through advertising. What is new about its latest initiative is that icons for advertisers are embedded in the maps. When clicked, a pop-up ad appears with additional information about the advertiser, including its lo...

The U.S. Supreme Court is now hearing arguments in eBay v. MercExchange. It is not examining the underlying dispute between the two firms -- indeed, MercExchange has successfully challenged eBay's use of its buy now technology. Rather, the court is examining whether issuing an injunction against the...

You know that half the money you are spending on Internet advertising is wasted -- you just aren't sure which half. You've read about Web analytics and have played with the free tools that come from your Web hosting solution, but you realize you need more. The only problem is, there are more than 60...

More and more companies are jumping into the Web analytics arena. In fact, Jupiter Research estimates the size of the Web analytics market will reach US$565 million in 2006. Choosing a Web analytics firm, however, is not merely a matter of brand name or even price. There are three distinct options i...

The Web analytics market is heating up, as evidenced by at least two recent high-profile business deals in this area. Google entered the picture with a successful US$30 million bid for Urchin last spring, and NetIQ sold WebTrends to a group of company executives for more than $90 million. The name o...

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has agreed to a US$1.1 million settlement from an interactive marketing firm that he said reused e-mail addresses and other consumer information without authorization. Spitzer described the case involving Datran Media as being possibly "the largest breach of p...

Google is moving to settle a class action lawsuit alleging widespread click fraud on its paid search network, setting aside US$90 million to repay advertisers who can prove they fell victim to the practice during a four-year period starting in 2002. The payouts would take the form of account credits...

In a move to extend its reach, NBC Universal on Monday agreed to buy iVillage, a leading online destination for women, for approximately US$600 million in cash. NBC Universal, which runs the NBC television network and the Universal film studio, will pay $8.50 in cash for each share of iVillage's sto...

U.S. advertisers have turned the practice of "product placement" into a lucrative market. This advertising phenomenon makes possible the insertion of an advertiser's product into a film, television program or video game. The estimated value of the total product-placement industry in 2005 -- when you...

Currently, marketers on the national and global scene who are sophisticated and e-commerce-savvy are positioning their brand names with the year 2010 in mind. However, very few are poised to make decent progress in less than five years, so how will they achieve their goals? If you tackle four critic...

If there's anything that can be called heresy in free-for-all cyberspace it's the notion that people should pay for e-mail, but that didn't stop a few heretics this week from offering monetized e-mail initiatives. Although Yahoo and AOL took the lion's share of the limelight with their "certified e-...

E-mail marketing has grown over time to become one of the most cost-effective methods of marketing used today. The ability to send large quantities of e-mail at almost no cost during the early days of e-mail marketing led to over saturation, deceitful practices and a bad reputation. Because this ind...

AOL and Yahoo are planning to launch a certified e-mail program in the coming months in conjunction with partner company Goodmail Systems. The two Web giants are positioning the service as an additional perk for trusted marketers that want to ensure their e-mails reach their intended recipients. Con...

The news that AOL and Yahoo are planning to roll out a certified e-mail delivery service based on partner company Goodmail Systems' CertifiedEmail methodology is leading some e-mail marketers and related providers of e-commerce services to conclude that a sea-change -- largely unwelcome -- is underw...