E-Commerce

When's the last time you heard an online retailer complain that their banner ads were too well targeted? How about an online publisher lamenting the torrent of accurate user data they were able to capture, or for that matter a user who just wanted more of the ads they were getting to be irrelevant t...

More is better, right? Wrong. In "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less," Barry Schwartz explains how too many options actually cause more psychological distress than good. And nowhere is the overabundance of choice more prevalent than the Internet, where any given Web site can present us with an ...

Chief marketing officers are given the unenviable, almost contradictory, task of catching marketing lightning in a bottle on a consistent basis. The problem is that turbulent economic conditions, like the ones we've experience recently, have historically stymied marketing innovation and forced CMOs ...

In what's become the equivalent of watching a fish flop around outside of water, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has now come forward with a new plea for Microsoft to purchase his struggling company. Just hours after Google announced it was pulling out of its planned search advertising partnership with Yahoo, ...

With tough economic times upon us, it is more important than ever to maximize the effectiveness of search engine marketing initiatives to drive both online and offline conversions. In September and October of 2008, Aberdeen surveyed over 200 organizations to unearth Best-in-Class search engine marke...

Search engine giant Google has walked away from a proposed ad-sharing deal with Internet portal Yahoo after the U.S. Department of Justice made it clear that it would seek to block the agreement in court. Google's decision is a profound setback for Yahoo, which has struggled to maintain its share in...

The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a controversial proposal to open up vacant "white spaces" spectrum for unlicensed use for broadband Internet access. The vote is the culmination of an idea that was first proposed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin more than four years ...

Search engine powerhouses Google and Yahoo have offered to significantly scale back the depth of their proposed online ad-sharing deal in an attempt to gain the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice. The proposed deal, first announced last June, would allow Yahoo to display ads from Google and ...

Most retailers experience a downturn in a weak economy. As consumers rein in spending, a downturn is usually not distributed equally among all retailers. The extent of the downturn depends on a number of factors, including geographic location of stores, product categories being sold and specific mar...

Consumers will get a break from having to wrestle with tough-to-open parcels this holiday season with the advent of "frustration-free" packaging from Amazon.com. The online retail giant will try to cut down on the sheer volume of packaging materials used to ship purchases from the site. The effort b...

The same credit problems that have hit many a home mortgage holder are also threatening to unplug troubled electronics big-box store Circuit City. The nation's second-largest seller of consumer electronics said Monday it will close 155 stores, lay off up to 17 percent of its 43,000-employee U.S. wor...

MySpace, MTV Networks and online ad platform Auditude are teaming up to try and squeeze money out of pirated video -- content distributed online without the permission of the rights holder. The trio's plan is to identify online pirated video clips, slap an ad overlay on top of them, and monetize the...

The old-school approach to order fulfillment doesn't fly for many Internet retailers. Warehousing, packing, shipping and return-order processing are labor-intensive and time-consuming. This has led to a growing trend among online sellers -- the use of Web technologies to automate order fulfillment.

An online ad-sharing deal between Google and Yahoo may be on the verge of collapse. Talks between the two Internet search powerhouses and the U.S. Department of Justice reportedly have stalled, prompting Google and Yahoo to consider walking away from the proposed agreement. Despite the press reports...

Ask most people what they like about working with small marketing firms and you'll hear answers such as "their personal approach" or "I'm not just a customer number to them" or "I get to work with the heavy hitters instead of some trainee just out of school." Yes, those are the things they say when ...