Advertising Industry

Consumers Spending Less on the Nonessentials

Jake Swearingen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:24:43 +0000

During the last two weeks, you have to work pretty hard to find the bright spots in all the gloomy news — my silver lining is that I have never been so happy to not have a 401k. But the steady drumbeat of economic crisis is forcing consumers to re-evaluate what they can and can’t [...]

Advertising Roundup: AdAge’s A-List, Google’s Negotiating Tactics, and More

Lindsay Blakely — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:33:45 +0000

AdAge names its A-List — No magazine has been immune to the downturn in ad pages. Nevertheless, AdAge found ten standout publications that are bucking industry trends. [Source: AdAge pdf download] General Mills, Kraft launch “word-of-mouth networks” — Even food companies are jumping on the social networking bandwagon. General Mills launched pssst.generalmills.com and Kraft started kraftfirsttaste.com, [...]

Sharpen Up Those Pitches — Google May Need an Agency

Jake Swearingen — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:08:53 +0000

There’s nothing like a Friday afternoon to get tongues wagging, so let’s look at one of the latest: Will the Mountain View search and advertising giant look towards an ad agency to help its marketing efforts? The Wall Street Journal broke the story, saying that execs at Google had met with several major Madison Ave. firms, [...]

Advertising Roundup: Google Wants to Boost Brand, Gawker Braces for Slow Sales, and More

Lindsay Blakely — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:29:03 +0000

Google looking into advertising itself — Google, a company that has long snubbed traditional offline advertising, has been talking to Madison Avenue ad agencies about ways to promote its brand. The move makes sense: Despite Google’s constant flow of new products, revenue growth slowed to 39 percent in the second quarter, down from 58 percent [...]

Search With Microsoft, Win a Prize!

Jake Swearingen — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:36:02 +0000

Microsoft is rolling out yet another way to entice users over to is failing search engine — prizes! This comes after the Redmond-based giant tried paying customers with its Cashback initiative to draw users to its Microsoft Live Search at the beginning of the summer, which turned out to be a bust. This time [...]

Some Common Mistakes When Marketing to Women

Jake Swearingen — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:42:38 +0000

I talked with Marti Barletta, president of the TrendSight Group who specializes in marketing to women, about what marketers get wrong when they try to sell to women. It’s an important topic — women control 80 percent of household spending, which will become even more important in the lean times we may be facing. 1. [...]

Advertising Roundup: Campaign Search Ads, Reality Check for Mobile, and More

Lindsay Blakely — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:28:42 +0000

Obama bests McCain in search ads — Only a few months ago, McCain had a huge advantage over Obama in terms of search presence. Not anymore. Mediaweek reports that the Obama camp has gone aggressive on snatching up ad opportunities related to keywords like “debate,” “debate winner,” and now terms connected to the financial crisis. [...]

Ads on Financial Site About to Become a Lot More Valuable

Jake Swearingen — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:06:49 +0000

With Wall Street collapsing and advertising spend rates waning, where should advertisers look to reach consumers? Well, online trading sites are seeing a huge bump in traffic, according to Nielsen Online. Visitors to Internet financial sites surged by 30 percent last week compared to average weekly traffic. It’s good news for publishers that cater to nervous [...]

Advertising Roundup: Pols Defend Google Deal, Advertisers Get Sneaky, and More

Lindsay Blakely — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:53:03 +0000

Silicon Valley politicians say Google-Yahoo lawsuit endangers industry — California House Democrats want the DOJ to go easy on Google and Yahoo, claiming a lawsuit would “detrimentally affect the online advertising market and electronic commerce.” Turns out, two of them received the majority of their campaign donations in 2007/2008 from computer and Web companies. [Source: [...]

Behavioral Targeting Has Its Day in the UK

Jake Swearingen — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:08:00 +0000

British behavioral targeting firm Phorm will begin a limited test tomorrow in the UK, working with ISP British Telecom to launch what it dubs its Webwise platform. Phorm will work directly with British Telecom, monitoring users web surfing habits to deliver up more relevant advertising. A whole host of questions about just how far behavioral [...]