Samsung is one of the fastest growing brands in the consumer electronic market.

For those of you interested in some academic studies on online communication, I've found a very interesting paper, by Wendy Macias on the Journal of Interactive Advertising. The paper's title is: "A Preliminary Structural Equation Model of Comprehension and Persuasion of Interactive Advertising Brand Web Sites" and has the main goal of building a preliminary structural equation model to better understand the relationships between interactivity, comprehension, and persuasion.

Through Brand Republic I've found a new online game that wants to become a viral game... Operation Slaps. The idea is nice, but if you want to have fun you need to play against a friend, otherwise, if you play against the computer, the game becomes soon boring.
The game has been created by NowWashYourHands, a UK company that has plenty of nice ideas.

BBC Radio Five Live has just relaunched its Web site to target new listeners and increase brand loyalty. The news is reported by Revolution Magazine which says that the new Web site should be easier to navigate and stimulate a greater interactive participation from listeners. To see how it looks like, here is the URL: www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive.

As reported on Yahoo! News, McDonald's Appeals to Mothers With Web Promotion. It's basically an e-mail marketing campaign run through a newsletter that aims to draw more mothers into the restaurants with coupons, parenting advice, and health and nutritional information.
Well, personally I would rather focus on targeting teens directly. As a mother I would never suggest my children to eat at McD, they will just go there with friends because a "cool" teen experience.

Anyway, a suggestion... eat pasta, it's much healthier!

eWeek presents an interview with Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president for the MSN personal services and business division who says that MSN will focus its efforts in delivery direct-marketing solutions and a new advertising platform.
According to Mehdi, "The online advertising market is now "clicking" and growing strongly", while spam, intrusive advertising and pop-up ads were the major sources of user dissatisfaction with the Internet in 2003."

Wendy M. Grossman, the author of Net.wars and online columist, has an interesting article today entitled: Viral marketing is dead: tell all your friends. She starts talking about a recent meeting run by IAB Uk, than she presents her opinions on online advertising and viral marketing.
Even though I don't agree with everything she says, I believe it's nice to hear different points of view.

New findings about media consumption by teens and young adults are reported today by MediaPost. According to a research by Yahoo! and Carat North America, teens and young adults consume many different types of media, but the Internet surpasses them all in the amount of time spent, which in an average week is as follows: (1) 16.7 hours online (excluding email), (2) 13.6 hours watching TV, (3) 12 hours listening to the radio, (4) 7.7 hours talking on the phone, (5) Six hours reading books and magazines (personal, not scholastic).
In the article you can also find further interesting figures presented by Yahoo! at the "Born to be Wired" conference for marketers.

Tessa Wegert talks about advergaming in her latest column on ClickZ. It's a nice article that summarizes a lot of the key issues about advergames. A special focus is on interactive scratch cards, and you might remember me talking about KLM online game a couple of months ago.

Tessa Wegert talks about advergaming in her latest column on ClickZ. It's a nice article that summarizes a lot of the key issues about advergames. A special focus is on interactive scratch cards, and you might remember me talking about KLM online game a couple of months ago.

Interactivity will not kill tv advertising, on the contrary, it will help it. Basically this is the message by John Battelle in his recent article on Business 2.0 concerning Honda television commercial "Cog" which created an online viral buzz.

As Revolution Magazine reports today, Virgin Atlantic is starting a new campaign to target premium travellers, in its competition game with British Airways. It will invest about �50m to relaunch it Upper Class Suite. The campaign will be run through direct mailing as well as through email marketing, brochures and a microsite. The creative agency for this campaign is (of course ;-) Smart, which I suppose is an Australian agency...

Pop icon Paul McCartney today fired a salvo for chicken rights, accusing fast food giant KFC of condoning cruelty to the "remarkable" birds that end up as take-away meals. As Smh.com.au reports that "These remarkable animals are deserving of at least a little kindness," he said in the letter written on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which this month sued KFC for allegedly disguising "grotesque abuses inflicted upon chickens by suppliers" in its online advertising."

A new research by DoubleClick, reported today on MediaPost suggests that rich media usage continues to grow quarter by quarter, while larger ads have surpassed the smaller options in popularity.
The article is pretty good because it's filled with interesting numbers on the diffusion of different online ads formats.
Large formats are getting more and more popular: for example, the leaderboard, a wide unit (728 x 90) that often appears at the top of web pages, is now the fastest growing size at 562% growth from Q2 2002, and is now the fourth most common size served by DoubleClick. Half-page ads (550 x 480) had the second highest response rate at .90%.

On CnnMoney I read this article's title: Amazon expands free shipping in Europe. Great, I said, I won't have to pay for shipping the tons of dvd and books I usually from Amazon.co.uk every couple of months! Well, it's not exactly like that:

Google will provide target advertising and web search to Weather.com. The news is reported in a press release on Biz Yahoo!.
I'm always astonished by reading the high-sounding declarations that usually come with these business deals, and Weather.com makes no exception by saying through Joe Fiveash, senior vice president of Product and Business Development:

In today's Digital Bulletin you can learn more about Sony's recent campaign aimed to raise awareness of portable devices such as MD and CD Walkman. The campaing with the brand message "You make it a Sony" will run online but also through music festivals and other music channels all across Europe.
The viral buzz will be spread by Cake Group, which has a very original Web site I reccomend to visit (even though I'm not sure that I like it ;-). Pay attention to the "hot cakes" part... it can make you sick...

America's "Influentials" -- a demographic of business networkers, news junkies and community movers and shakers -- prefer the Internet to any other media for acquiring their daily information, according to a new study that you can read about on Adage.

Lawrence Schoeffler unveils the secrets of online marketing to Real estate agents. Some obvious advices, but also some nice tips in the article.

Do you want to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your Web site? Ask streakers to "wear" your ad tattoos. This is the idea of Goldenpalace.com, online gaming provider, that has decided to use unconventional marketing tools like streakers hanging out at British Open and World Swimming Championships. Did someone say that online companies lack of creativity? ;-)

You can read more on Yahoo! News.

Do you want to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your Web site? Ask streakers to "wear" your ad tattoos. This is the idea of Goldenpalace.com, online gaming provider, that has decided to use unconventional marketing tools like streakers hanging out at British Open and World Swimming Championships. Did someone say that online companies lack of creativity? ;-)

You can read more on Yahoo! News.

... has been explained by Ken Yamada on Information Week. Webcast technology is being used to run meetings, to communicate with employees, train sales forces, make product announcements, brief investors and analysts, and run corporate seminars, among other uses.
The article is very good and detailed and provides with a lot of useful information about web casting technology, costs and effectiveness.

Yahoo! Consumer Direct Powered by ACNielsen that's the (long) name of the new service targeting packaged-goods marketers that tries to answer a longstanding question of many advertisers: Do online ads spur offline sales?
Well, this is actually the question asked by AdWeek in an article appearing on Yahoo! News Advertising.

ING Direct has launched its newest television commercial on CBS MarketWatch. The :30 second spot will be carried on the site's story pages for the next two weeks, before beginning a run on network television. In the press release, it's nice to read the (interested) opinion of Scot McLernon, EVP Sales & Marketing, MarketWatch.com:

Guess what? Findwhat a leading developer and provider of performance-based marketing services for the Internet, today reported record financial results for the three and six months ending June 30, 2003. Revenue in Q2 2003 increased 80% versus Q2 2002, and was more than $500,000 ahead of the Company's most recent projections. FindWhat.com has increased revenue sequentially for 15 consecutive quarters. You can learn more about it reading through the press release on Business Wire.

This is not exactly about online advertising, anyway I think it's somehow connected since it the discussion is on PDF files used for online presentations. The usability guru Jakob Nielsen talks about the matter in his Alertbox, suggesting that:

NetRatings wants to expand into the European market. They have announced the acquisition of NetCrawling S.A., which offers an online advertising monitoring service. The news is reported by IAR that also reports some opinions to explain that the market for online advertising intelligence has just started to develop and appears to be particularly interesting to follow.

Everything you want (and don't want) to know about advertising has been collected by Advertising Age in the upcoming Encyclopedia of Advertising. The New York Times has an interesting review of the book today. I especially enjoyed the final analysis by Edward Rothstein who writes:

Dawn Anfuso reports about a new agreement between Volkswagen and Apple to launch on the market the 2003 New Beetle with a complimentary iPod. The news is featured on iMediaConnection in Promo to Watch, in which is said that the campaign will start this week with promotions all through America, both online and offline.

This is not exactly about web advertising, but I thought it was interesting to talk of the two main (and only?) dot.coms that today have merged. I'm talking about Buongiorno and Vitaminic, Buongiorno is one of the main web and wireless advertising providers in Europe, with Vitaminic is something like Mp3.com, for what concerns music.
You can read the press release online (pdf). This time it's in English :-)

Avis has created a "Who Tries Harder?" contest. As explained on MediaPost Avis has launched a competition to give away prizes to its customers and employees. The contest will go on on www.wetryharder.com and it's aimed to increase customer loyalty as well as customer trials.

Sorry I could not stop stop myself from using this funny title (I really can't hide my sarcastic copy soul ;-) But talking about such a serious stuff like Search Engines are (here comes the sarcasm again...), this post is to highlight you a recent article by Chris Sherman on SearchEngineWatch entitled "Measuring Search Engine ROI". It features the results of a survey by NetIQ in which more than 800 partecipants responded to questions about their search engine marketing efforts and the way they measure success, which, by the way, the 31% of them don't even measure...

Film fan sites can now really influence a Hollywood release. It's not just a question of promoting a movie online, it's also about considering Internet based communities. It's like the case of "committed minorities".
As The Guardian writes today:

To commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Bruce Lee's death, Egovision has created a special Web site.
The site is to be promoted via a campaign aimed at 18- to 35-year-old fans of action movies and gaming. More details on the campaign created on account of Medusa Films, can be found on Revolution Magazine.

Shopping search engine DealTime has released a ROI Tracker, a free tool for advertisers to track their conversion and sales metrics. The ROI Tracker gives three metrics: conversion-to-click ratios, conversion-to-sales ratios, and costs of sales (Internet News talks about it today).
We can really say that search engine technology providers are really working hard to make people talk about them. There's still a big business out there to be exploited. Search technology is particulary important to e-commerce web sites, and I believe it's interesting to notice how search function efficiency is often underestimated by them or, at least, not considered as important as it should be.
Adage talked also about the huge search engine business a couple of days ago. The focus in this case was on search engines and advertising, saying that Sponsored Internet search engine ads spurred more than $200 million in online travel sales and more than 2 million financial services application submission according to new research by the IAB.

UK online media owners will become the first in the world to be asked by their trade body to cap the number of intrusive ad formats appearing on their sites. The news is reported today on New Media Age.

In a press released just posted on Silicon Valley Biz Ink DoubleClick has announced a partnership with Tribal DDB Los Angeles.
Tribal DDB Los Angeles will use DoubleClick's DART for Advertisers product exclusively, in order to deliver, report on and measure online marketing and advertising campaigns on behalf of its clients.

I just received a protional email from the Wall Street Journal.
The title of the message was:
From the President of the Wall Street Journal Online
... This title sounded kind of scary to me... or maybe I perceived it as funny. I'm not sure.
Anyhow I think it's an high-sounding way of addressing people. Ok, you wanted people to immediately understand that wasn't spam, but please don't make it sound like an heavy statement, don't take yourself too seriously.
In medio stat virtus.

As often happens, Joseph Jaffe came out with some interesting points in his latest column on iMediaConnection. The question is how does a marketer entice, incent or engage a consumer to the point of trial?
Product samples and coupons. This is Joseph's answer, that of course is supported with a some good examples.
In some ways I like the idea, but if I think about using it in Italy I don't think it will be successful. Coupons are not an important part of our daily shopping experience, and most of all people that will be more inclined to use coupons are not online, I mean housewives, that are still a big segment in my country.

Yahoo! will buy Overture. I'm telling you no big news. But as a blogger I'm "committed" to provide you with further information and perspectives so... Here a two articles published today that present the possible consequences of the fact above mentioned. One is on Business Week and talks about Yahoo! and its competition with Google (Why Google Should Be Worried) and the other is on IAR and focuses on how will MSN affected by Yahoo!'s move on the market (Yahoo! Overture Combo could hurt MSN).
Of course, you can get it all in one, just go on Reuters: Overture Deal Raises stakes for Google and Msn.

Do you want to boost awareness and consideration and, by the chance, are you an automaker? Then advertise online! As Adage says today, the automobile industry is increasingly investing in online advertising.
It's the case of Toyota, but also of Volvo, Lexus, Audi and, of course, of BMW.
A part from simply advertising, automakers and automarketers are focusing more and more on Web communication in general, by setting up Web site to appeal consumers engaging them in a unique experience with the brand and with the car.
I believe cars can be considered to some extent an "experience good", so it's important for automakers to make people feel how a car is and how the driving experience could be. It's an emotional approach to online communication, that more and more brands are trying to create, in a way, it's a form of advertainment.

Ok, first of all I have to say that my reflections these days are very much influenced by the fact I'm now taking a marketing course... Anyway, with this post I'd like to point out The Guardian's fairness in addressing its readers. Recently they have decided to start charging for some parts of their information Web site, today they've published an article explaining how and why the came up with such a decision: Log on, fork out.
I liked this explanation. Too many of us it might sound kind of obvious, but I'd like to add that N
not everybody is working with a contact with the online industry, and not everybody knows that it's hard to base a business model for a Web site only on advertising revenues.
Talk to people, they will listen, they will understand.

The New York Times Online has been the first Web site to introduce half-page ads, then several others online publications have followed. After several months of practicing this format, it's interesting to read Zach Rodgers's (looks like he's becoming one of my favourite authors :-) article on Turbo Ads presenting agencies opinions.
Audi is happy with it as McKinney's Interactive Supervisor Erin Bredemann says:

I thought the game was over with Google defeating me when a couple of days ago I received this message:

Read Adsense vs Martina Act 1

IAB Italy has recently released a report with some interesting numbers concerning the development of online advertising in "my" country. In the first quarter of 2003 online advertising spendings have raised of 7.7%. In particular, it appears that clothing, beverages and self care industry, together with public institutions have strongly started investing in the Internet as promotional media.
Sponsorships are the preferred kind of advertising covering 21.6% of total investments. Email advertising is also on the rise (9.8%) while mobile advertising through SMS has suffered of a strong slowing down (-28.5%).
If you want to know more about what's going on in Italy, drop me a line, I'll translate some more data for you :-)

The new Crossfire sports coupe is coming out and Chrysler has decided to promote it with a massive use of interactive media. As IAR reports, Chrysler is increasing its commitment to interactive marketing, using banner ads, a newly developed Web site, a Cd-rom and a TiVo showcase promotion.
The article on IAR is particularly interesting to read, since it explains the different aims of promotional features employed in this campaign and the media in which it will be run.

Location based services are a good thing not only for marketers, but also for rescuers. As explained on Fullpress.it (sorry it's in Italian), on July 24th, a new law will come into effect in Europe that will oblige mobile operators to offer location based support to rescuers for calls to emergency number 112. According to a British statistic, 60% of the people calling for help are not able to provide exact information about their location.
The technology solution provider will be Openwave.

Someone says marketers are lacking creativity. Well, after reading today's news on CNETAsia I have to dissent.
A brilliant (?!) marketer at SK Telecom, a Korean cell phone service provider, has invented a mosquito repelling tone. For 3,000 won (US$2.50), users can download a sound file which is inaudible to the human ear but helps ward off mosquitoes within a one-meter radius, the firm said.
Well, I don't know if it works for mosquitos, but I'm sure this announcement creates a "buzz" :-)

This news isn't exactly about online advertising, however I think I "have to" report it since it involves one of the main Italian brands. I'm talking about Fiat, the automakers, which is not doing very well in the market but in the last years have came out with nice advertising. Now they have appointed Publicis and Publicis will open a new office in Turin to fully support its client.
If you want to learn more about this and you have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal (which btw I don't have :-) you might want to have a look at today's article on the fact.

It's nice to find online articles published on paper as well, and it surely helps when you're a blogger :-)
I was actually reading this morning the last issue of New Media Age, thinking about posting a reference to new MMS campaigns going on here in the UK.
I say here in the UK since I'm currently living in London, for about three weeks attending the Summer School in Marketing at the London School of Economics...
All right, enough with me, to get back to MMS, I'll suggest your reading the article on NMA, since it provides you with a few good examples of big brands like Coca-Cola, starting the first major trials of MMS ad campaigns.

As Amy Corr presents on MediaPost Jose Cuervo has launched a new online contest named "Face the Nation". Check it out on Cuervo Nation, you have the chance to win trips to the Caribbean.

It's summer, it's hot, let's slow down for a while and let's try to analyse how the online advertising industry is doing. This is the suggestion by Zachary Rodgers that on Channel Seven last week wrote The State of the Sector.
He talks a little bit of ads quality and industry expectations, he refers to @d:Tech and he brings up a bunch of useful opinions but consultants and analysts. Definitely worth reading.

Ching ching! Yahoo! coins it in! Many web sites are talking about Yahoo!'s profit posting. Personally, I liked Silicon.com's article, not only for its nice title, but also because it reported interesting analysts opinions on the fact, especially for what concerns its partnership with Overture.
However, if you want to know more about the financial aspect of the story it you should read the article on the Washington Post.

I'm a X-er. I didn't know that until today when I read the The X Factor on AdWeek. I'm not sure the definition exactly applies to me to, given the fact that I'm European, anyhow, at first I enjoyed the idea of being part of a difficult group to target. Of course I meant this as a consumer, not as a marketer.
But in Sarah Mahoney's article I found that there are some points X-ers should be proud of such as: X-ers are more restless, mistrustful of corporate management and easily dissatisfied.
We are a "problem" for agencies and employers. So, we are or we will become a problem for ourselves as well, as marketers and as managers.
At the end I think it's not just a question of advertising. It's a question of life, and that's even worser :-(

It seems like Charlie's Angels is the only movie out now... I really gotta see it...
In the meantime, I will play on the Net with the branded advergames created by BlockDot for Sony Pictures. You can have a look at them on Kewlbox. Have fun!

Can you name an online campaign that really strucked your mind in the last six months?
Well, let me think... yep, I remember "Pen" by General Electrics, but when I fist saw it I didn't realize it was an ad... Maybe because I'm not familiar with GE logo or maybe because the campaign was not so memorable...
On Revolution Emily Booth explains that online research from MSN, in association with the IAB, points towards a lack of memorable campaigns, despite some groundbreaking work. Is online creativity dead? I believe in some ways, online creativity isn't even born yet.
Anyway, you can get better opinions than mine on Revolution July issue that is still free but, unfortunately is formatted in a almost unreadable way :-(

Joseph Jaffe is one of my favourite authors since he often focus on interactivity between brands and customers and on pull-based advertising. On Monday on iMediaConnection he wrote Inviting Interaction which I think is a very good collection of useful examples to look at. Online marketing is evolving and it's moving towards consolidation by stressing the key aspect of Internet communication in comparison to other media: interactivity.
Of course this doesn't sound new to most of you but, again, I believe it's good to go through best practices to keep it in mind.

I'm very disappointed by Google AdSense. I might even say I'm angry with Google. A "perfect" machine that fails in a quite miserable way.
So, here is the story....
As many others I was excited by the idea of earning some money to support this blog through Google AdSense Program. I've tried to apply for it twice, and both times I got the following answers:

All right, I'm Italian, my English might not be perfect, but please, at least you guys, gimme a sign what I'm writing here on Adverblog at least resemble to English.
I wrote emails to Google complaining about its reply, but I haven't heard back from it in almost one week time.
My only "fault" has been to insert my Italian address for payment...
How can I solve this situation? How comes Google AdSense Commission don't even look at web sites but just checks the owner's nationality or postal address??
The perfect search engine is not so perfect anymore???
(and here, again, I refer to the fact that Google Toolbar is not available for Mac users)

Auto-makers like flashy internet advertising. Like drinks producers, they decide to promote their brands online by using emotional and engaging Web sites and ads. To read more about Volvo's recent campaign, developed by Flashtalking, have a look at MediaDailyNews.

Online advertising, with the help of traditional brick-and-mortar companies, is staging a comeback -- emerging from the prolonged dry spell that followed the dot-com bust.
Traditional advertisers are beginning to allocate more of their marketing budgets to the Web, helping the online ad industry take its first steps toward what analysts see as a sustainable recovery.
The news is reported today by Reshma Kapadia on Reuters Web site.

Web site operators are getting better at figuring out where you live and what your interests are, all in the process of better targeting their advertising and content. David Strom writes an interesting column on Internet Week whose title is Internet Advertisers Find Better Ways To Find Out About You. I read it with particular interest since it focuses on targeting and technology aspects, explaining a lot of details from the "backstage" of an online campaign.

Mobileway has been chosen by Virgin Music, part of The EMI Group, as the mobile marketing partner for the launch of the latest singles from pop groups, Blue & Atomic Kitten in France.
The month-long marketing campaign set to be launched by Virgin Music features an instant win competition which will allow fans to win a host of prizes, and a channel for participants to send in their details and preferences to form part of a new Virgin Music fan club.
More details in the press release on Mobileway Web site.

Heinz has created a consumer website for all its brands for the first time, making the internet central to its marketing strategy. As Ravi Chandiramani writes on Brand Republic, Heinz has decided to launch HeinzOffers.co.uk to sign-up consumers for opt-in newsletters advertising special offers and discounted prices.
The new Web site has been developed by Swamp.

Sandra Guy, on Sun-Times presents the case of Restaurant.com that after a "near-death" experience, is thriving by offering consumers online gift certificates for restaurant meals nationwide.
Restaurant.com tallied $3 million in revenue last year and is projecting $7 million this year.

The effectiveness of Web site advertising is directly and significantly impacted by the level of personal loyalty audience members feel toward the content of specific sites, according to the latest research released by the Online Publishers Association. The news is reported on Adage.
I believe it's a positive news for bloggers. In a blog content is king and, maybe, will become a revenue stream... Am I dreaming?

You can't base a revenue model only on online advertising. As explained on Boston.com Yahoo! keeps teaching us that it's important to diversify the revenue stream by offering premium fee-based services. You can't live with advertising alone...
That's why Yahoo! is lauching Games-on-Demand pay and play as much as you want (or can :-)

Andrew Gerhart, on Top Site Listing summarizes the characteristics of the main search engines and provides a few tips to improve positioning and to get the best results from SE advertising.
It's a summary of a wide topic, however it's useful.

According to a recent survey from WebTrends and iProspect, 41% of US marketers are currently running paid search engine marketing (SEM) efforts.
Read on the full article on eMarketer: How Marketers Are Measuring SEM Efforts.

The latest issue of Revolution Magazine features a brief case study of Audi A8 online campaign.
The campaign has been sub-divided into two phases: the first, named pre-lauch, aimed to raise awareness of the car and capture early prospects. And the second to present the message that the new A8 embodied Vorsprung durch Technikas well as generating leads.
Site content and online advertising were developed by digital agency Good Technology.

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives