Digital Thoughts

The Rogue Marketer
I remember someone instant messaging me and saying that I should watch the Katie Couric show as one of the more well-known names in the performance marketing industry would receive unanticipated exposure. For... More...

Microsoft Bails. World Yawns. Much Written.
The on again, off again drama of Microsoft's potential acquisition of Yahoo came to a close this past weekend, for now at least. This first chapter or perhaps conclusion of a story, took just north of three months to unfold. More...

Real Genius
Having worked for more than a few years, here are two things that we can say about the Internet advertising industry. First, if you work in the space, you will meet an incredible number of truly smart people. Second, if you... More...

You're Fired
Judging by the recent run up in the stock market and the better than expected earnings reports from previously battered tech stalwarts Apple, Amazon, Google, and Yahoo, you might start to think the worst has... More...

Ad:Tech SF 2008 Takeaways
For those who made it up, down, and/or across to ad:tech San Francisco, hopefully you took our advice during your pre-show planning, making sure to wear comfortable shoes, bringing plenty of business cards, showing up... More...

Ad:Tech SF 2008 Survival Guide
The Wall Street Journal, among others, reported yesterday that "Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL are closing in on a deal to combine their Internet operations, a move aimed at thwarting Microsoft Corp.'s effort to... More...

Conflict of Interest
When Google purchased DoubleClick, no one really believed the deal wouldn't go through, but had you listened to the noise, which ranged from regulatory scrutiny to legal action by its competitors, it seemed anything... More...

The Moment of Truth
In case you want to know, the title of this week's article does indeed refer to the television show of the same name. Based on last weeks data from Nielsen Media Research, we can assume that more than ten million... More...

Microsoft Yahoo Acquisition Update
Let's say that you run a nice company, a well-known company that has done well by most accounts, having grown from just an idea to one of the best brands in its field. You took this company public before the dot com crash, and... More...

Power to The People - Part 1
As we wrote last month during our analysis of the Writer's Guild of America strike, the 101 day work stoppage led to "$1.3 billion in lost revenue by Hollywood-dependent businesses and $750 million in lost... More...

Is being a CEO always this hard?
When most companies hire a COO, it doesn't make the front section of the Wall Street Journal, but then again, Facebook doesn't exactly qualify as "most companies." Not with its $15 billion valuation and growing bevy... More...

Affiliate Summit West 2008
We love Affiliate Summit. And, if this were the movie "Summer School" we'd simply fill the rest of this page with a bunch of "very, very, very,...much" to reach our normal word limit. Intrepid readers shouldn't let... More...

The Writer's Strike... Out?
Last week, amid the hubbub over Microsoft wanting to take out Yahoo while Yahoo looked for another date to the prom, the strike between members of the Screen Actors Guild and the studios officially ended with... More...

FTC and The Real future of Lead Gen
While the student loan industry has seen better times (see our coverage here), not all news from around the lead generation landscape carries such gloom, certainly not in the eyes of ValueClick, who yesterday... More...

Much Ado About Yahoo - Part 1
This Tuesday was special and happens once every four years. They call it Super Tuesday, perhaps because of the super long lines and super confusion that takes place as people in 24 states cast their vote on a... More...

Get 'er Done
What separates the person who always gets something done from the one who seems to leave things unfinished? Is it organization skills, work ethic, motivation, or perhaps just genetics. When it comes to organization... More...

The Bubble Is Bursting
We'd joke and say that you'd have to be Osama bin Laden to not know of the housing crisis stemming from a complete meltdown in our credit system, but then again, bin Laden probably knows more about it than we... More...

Business Cycles
Taking a break from the economy for a minute, let's think about something else typically on people's minds this time of year, getting in shape. As it's the start of the New Year, most people have walked by the mirror, looked... More...

The Falling Knife
A couple of years ago, we went to a the mortgage bankers tradeshow in Florida, a 6000 strong conference featuring speeches from former Presidents, the Secretary of Defense, and even a famous basket ball... More...

DM Predictions for 2008
Hard to believe that only a few days separate this year from last. By now, the office ghost towns have once again returned to their former selves as bodies again fill the cubicles, and while productivity hasn't fully returned... More...

Affiliate Accountability
In last week's article, we looked at something we called the Affiliate Divide, a term we defined to describe the gap that separates, and the one that some cross, when they go from being independents to owners of... More...

The Performance Marketing Divide
Last night, we came across a blog that, for lack of a better description, could be the exact opposite of our own publication. We've been called many things, but motivating has yet to make that list. People are curious... More...

Check, please!
Woody Allen once remarked that nobody wants to join a group that wants them. That is, people don’t often want what anyone can have; they want what not everyone can get. More...

Evolution of the Arbitrager
The beauty and curse of the internet, especially internet advertising, arises from the little to no barriers to entry. More...

The Changing Performance Landscape - A Retrospective
The press, the VC money, all of it has seemingly followed the rise of social media sites. Interestingly enough, though, the largest of the Internet advertising shows seems to have the least representation from the... More...

Amway enters Affiliate Space
Two weeks ago we shared our interest and enthusiasm for Facebook's new ad platforms, not so much because of the targeting capabilities but because it had the chance to usher in a new era of performance... More...

Facebook and The Future of (Performance) Marketing
Two advertisers seem to dominate airport advertising - BMW and Accenture. After a few visits to the airport, I feel I can tell you all about BMW's cars and what it takes to "be a Tiger." Then again, I like cars and... More...

Adtech NYC 2007 Roundup
While we can’t technically proclaim that adtech has come to a close, since the exhibit hall closed before the full conference concluded, most in our space have returned back to engage in the classic post show... More...

Ad:Tech New York City 2007 Party List
Fans of Jim Carrey's movie "The Mask" will recall this, one of my favorite lines, "P-A-R-T-Why? Because I gotta!" And so it is for the ad:tech faithful - Party time, the bonding time that unites the 10,000 or so registrants more than any conference topic... More...

Fraud 2.0
As though straight out of some biblical parable, for whatever reason, a percentage of those engaging in an activity will do it the good way while a percentage will do it the bad way. In sports or academics, they call it... More...

A Local Dilemma - Part 1
I recently joined a new gym, and to make sure that I go, I signed up for some training sessions with the intent to go three times per week for as long as it takes until I actually like the gym. For my wallet's sake, I would... More...

A Lead Dilemma
During his presentation at TARGUSinfo's most recent online lead quality summit, Terrence Thomas, CMO of eLearners, made a comment that sounded like any other, but some comments end up sticking with you... More...

Affiliate Management 102
In June we wrote an article inspired by some of the most important people in the direct marketing space, account managers. As I wrote then, I still remember my entry into the online space. I was asked whether I wanted to do media buying or... More...

TARGUSinfo Online Lead Quality Summit Wrap-Up
With their client summit, 100+ clients, and close relationship with the IAB, TARGUSinfo has established themselves as not just a leading technology provider for lead verification but as a... More...

Ringtone Shakeup - Part 2
If you read Part 1, you see the makings for an industry ripe for change. It's a market that relies heavily on affiliates to drive new sign-ups and has little to low barrier to entry. Few offers have the breadth of reach, the run of... More...

Recession Planning
The question currently being debated is whether the economy is heading for a recession, which loosely defined is a sustained period where the economy does not grow. The housing market which drove much of the... More...

In Search of Angels
Let's say that you wanted to get into mortgage lead generation. Given the current market conditions, we should change this to debt consolidation lead generation. If you wanted to become a lead generator in this field, you could as... More...

Pushing the Envelope
It wasn't long ago that Valueclick announced it had received an inquiry from the FTC over its end user acquisition practices, something that didn't hurt the company's stock until they barely missed their second quarter... More...

A Different Type of Subprime Fallout - Part 2
The marketing of subprime credit cards has gone on in scale, albeit rather quietly for years. My first recollection of these cards comes in 2002 not long after the collapse of Providian and their NextCard division which made, and... More...

A Different Type of Subprime Fallout - Part 1
The past three weeks have had more than just the financial markets on edge. They have caused the whole world to take notice. Included in that group are those in the mortgage lead generation market. After years of prosperity, that... More...

Making Sense of the Mortgage Market Mess, Week Two - Part 2
Over the course of several years, we've talked many times about the mortgage lead generation market. As the fuel for much of that growth, the subprime lending market, which collapses at unprecedented speeds, the mortgage lead... More...

University of Phoenix Does It Again
In February of 2006, University of Phoenix shook up the lead generation space by forming an exclusive partnership with Advertising.com. This meant that any company that produced leads or wanted to produce leads... More...

Guilty By Association
As a fan of the Simpsons, if I were to head to the movies right now, I would see that, or perhaps Transformers, except that it might no longer play in one of the nicer cineplex theaters. Perhaps, I'd start with the... More...

Stockapalooza
Every so often, we do a different type of analysis. Instead of looking at the state of mobile marketing or the current strategies of pay-per-click arbitragers, we look at a completely different market. With the second... More...

Conference Roundup: Affiliate Summit East 2007
Miami has all the characteristics of a good convention town. It has an incredible amount of hotels, multiple convention centers, top notch dining, international accessibility, and generally good weather. It also has plenty... More...

Checking in on Yahoo
The stock market doesn't ever tell the full story, but it often can tell a great story. Such seems the case for Yahoo. Jerry Yang succeeded Terry Semel on June 18th, and investors rewarded the stock with a modest 3%... More...

Class Acts
A strange thing happened earlier this week for those running ringtone offers. Affiliates everywhere logged in, and their brows furrowed. Their previous night's numbers didn't look quite right. They checked their... More...

Going, Going, Gone.
Call it the rise and fall of an old media at the helm of new. Call it a sign that we have truly entered Web 2.0. Call it what you will, but the end of one reign and the beginning of a new took place on June 18th, 2007. That's when Yahoo... More...

Breaking Down Paid Search, Part 2
Even though the affiliates work within Google's system, you can see why, taken together, Google might consider them a sub-optimal user experience. As we've seen, affiliate marketers, especially for popular offers, inadvertently allow... More...

Guide to Taking Money
Those doing lead generation occupy an enviable space. It's a business that has faired well during the ad recovery, and despite some hiccups that arose as a New Century imploded, more verticals than not have an... More...

Affiliate Arbitrage
Generally, when Google makes a change to its quality score algorithm, we find out the same way Apple Store employees learn of their new products, from an announcement on the web site. At the time of... More...

Incentive Promotion / Valueclick
During last week's exuberance over the sales of 24/7 Real Media and aQuantive, one of the survivors in the online advertising space disclosed that the FTC has begun a formal inquiry into their lead generation practices. More...

Search Arbitrage Strategies
Those not in the direct marketing space tend to have an antiquated notion of what it really means and associate search engine arbitrage only with affiliate marketers, generally in a negative light. Search engine arbitragers span the... More...

Quiz Show
If you use Gmail, you probably have noticed an ad showing up more than you might expect. Given its prominence and the seeming lack of relevance to your conversations, you might have wondered whether Coffeefool.com was more... More...

The Right (Media) Stuff
In October of last year, Yahoo took many in the ad space by surprise announcing a strategic investment in ad network and exchange Right Media, as it led a $45 million Series B round of financing. While not an... More...

Ad:Tech SF 2007 - The Tipping Point?
There is something strangely familiar but uniquely different about this Ad:Tech. Others have had thousands of attendees, long lines for registration,Casale's trademark red bags, booth babes, free beer, all fueled by an almost tangible energy where quiet conversation and standing room are in short supply. More...

Do No Evil. Google Gets Back to Roots.
Over the years, Google's mantra of "Do no evil" went from an unorthodox, out of the box approach to capitalism to the butt of many jokes dealing with their lack of transparency. They have even been accused of having an unpredictable, unexplainable, almost dictatorial behavior. More...

Account Managers - Masters of our Domain
Each week, the Confidential includes tips from some of the best known faces in the industry - if not figuratively, certainly literally as their wonderful mugs adorn the bottom portion of the newsletter. When I started in Internet... More...

Better Practices for Incentive Marketers
After thinking that the incentive space might have slowed down, last week's analysis showed that if anything the opposite has occurred. Despite the competition on display, ongoing challenges with email marketing, and... More...

Incentive Promotion Acting Badly?
At the Confidential, we loathe to criticize incentive marketing in general. In some ways, we feel a strange duty to protect and promote our own, not to mention that many of our sponsors have, and continue to, make their living... More...

To See or Not to See
This week, upwards of two thousand people made the same trek as I, descending or perhaps ascending to Hollywood, California to check out OMMA:High Anxiety. On the day of my arrival to town, though, I received a notice... More...

A Sub-Prime Primer - Part 1
In less than two weeks, from February 21, 2007 through March 5, 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 700 points, or almost six percent of its value. In the week and a half since, the Dow has gained less... More...

Ad Network Identity Crisis
As we pointed out briefly in this week's other piece on ad networks, of the new entrants in the ad network space, very few have followed what we call the "search engine" route. The companies in this group have a special... More...

Optimize This - 40 Billion Impressions
"Way back" in July 2005, News Corp went from a company known for its not quite Fair and Balanced Fox News (yet home to the Simpsons and Family Guy) to an interactive powerhouse. They did this almost overnight with their tour de... More...

Commoditization of the Direct Marketing Process
You surf MySpace and in between the barrage of dating offers placed ever so conveniently that you stand a good chance of accidentally clicking, you come across a banner that those in the direct marketing space know all too well. You... More...

Jessica Simpson Sold Me a Pizza
It’s true. Jessica Simpson sold me a pizza. She didn’t deliver it, unfortunately, but the gorgeous and occasionally photogenic star got me thinking about Pizza Hut’s Cheesy Bites Pizza - you know, the one with the “pull-apart outer crust... More...

TheLoanPage.com 1997 - 2007
When we cover the lead generation space, we most often focus on new companies, acquisitions, interesting technologies, and/or strategies used in the space. In today’s hot bed of lead generation growth, we don’t often cover or... More...

MySpace Makes A Statement
Those in the Web 2.0 world know Michael Arrington. The affiliate world has no direct equivalent, but one of its larger than life personalities, Jon F***** (he doesn’t like his last named shared), founder of Wicked Fire Forums, had site... More...

Affiliate Summit Roundup
This week, the fastest growing tradeshow that many have not heard of took place in Las Vegas. As was the case last year, and the year before that and perhaps at every show they’ve organized, this year’s show sold out. Several of... More...

In Support of User-Generated
In 1979, a British Band named The Buggles released a song that almost all reading have heard at some point in their lives. Chances are most people haven’t seen the video, which is slightly ironic considering its status as the first... More...

Chinese Chicken and the Egg
Last year, one of the predictions we made was that someone would create the X10 equivalent for Chinese traffic. Someone would create the ad that would not only monetize any remnant but signal a new dawn of advertising. With so much... More...

Captured: Experian Interactive Media Test
A little more than 18 months has passed since Experian Interactive acquired LowerMyBills, the top online mortgage banking lead generation firm, for $380 million in May 2005. And, almost a year and a half has passed since Experian... More...

A Look into the World of Payday Loans
You might remember the tiny remote controlled car ads that every emailer ran several years ago. If you wanted one of those cars though, or to buy the non-remote controlled kind, you need one thing - money. December revolves... More...

Lead Gen - Google takes a Baby Step
ClickZ ran an article that didn’t seem to draw much attention from other purveyors of Internet marketing news, the title of which tells, “AdWords to Host Small Business Landing Pages.” It might seem insignificant, but reading this... More...

Buyerzone - Doing Lead Gen Right
As much as I’d like to think I know about lead generation and lead generation companies, each day it seems I learn of a lead generation company and/or vertical that I didn’t know before. Reading alarm:clock a few days ago, I had the... More...

One Goal, Two Approaches
An interesting bit of news made the rounds the past two days, that of the four-year old Google Answers shutting down. In theory, it made for a nice compliment to the company’s core product - a purely technology based... More...

Assessing Ad:Tech
When Experian purchased LowerMyBills creating Experian Interactive, the lead generation company had reached a size and scale that seemed tough to increase. Yet, both companies will most likely share the fact that LMB, as it’s... More...

Making Waves
In the interactive advertising space, Ad:Tech holds the title of most significant conference, with Ad:Tech New York as the crown jewel in the series. At each show, and certainly during the New York one, you can count on companies to... More...

You Want to Know about Ad:Tech
In a few short days, the largest online advertising event will commence. While we all book our tickets, schedule meetings, and break out the comfortable shows to get business done, what everybody looks forward to are the parties. With that in mind, we present our 2nd annual DM Confidential Guide to Ad:Tech Nightlife. More...

The Unmonetizable
Almost ten months ago, I made some predictions for what might happen before the close of 2006. Similar to our Trends piece on the un-network ad networks, this particular prediction involves an issue that leaves many ad... More...

Testing for the Masses
Yesterday, Google quietly unveiled its newest product. It doesn’t have the glamour of last week’s billion dollar purchase of YouTube. In fact it has nothing do with video, recent acquisitions, or Web 2.0. Google’s new product, dubbed... More...

Pixel Bling - The Embedded Culture
The purchase of YouTube is one of those Internet deals that will be remembered for years to come. It ranks up there with other landmark acquisitions such as Yahoo’s buying Overture, eBay buying PayPal, IAC buying... More...

Hot Transfer - Pay per Call and Lead Generation
Pay per call reminds me in many ways of online video. It’s an area that shows tremendous growth and promise, but at the same time is so broad and has so many applications that wrapping one’s mind around it is difficult. There isn’t... More...

Yahoo and the Internet, Part 2
As we saw in Part 1, Yahoo’s stock price has seen better days. In the beginning of this year, the company announced guidance that met expectations only to be treated with a double-digit percentage decline in their... More...

Video Primer Part 2
The world of online video includes a number of facets - from content for sites, as content for download, to ads that can appear on content and ads that appear before and/or after other video content. When most people say video... More...

Almost Live from TARGUSinfo Lead Quality Summit
Many companies have client conferences. Technology companies have long been known for theirs, and with respect to Internet companies, eBay can throw an event with the best of them. When it comes to Internet companies, not many... More...

Lead Generation: Quality over Quantity
There was a time in lead generation when all that mattered was the number of leads someone could produce. The price paid per lead was almost exclusively based on the numbers generated, not necessarily how those leads performed... More...

Part 2 - Domain Name Landscape
Whenever an operation reaches a certain size, it is impossible to avoid some friction. Think of McDonalds and Wal-Mart in the offline world or Datran in the online world. The percentage of complaints each receives is low in... More...

Bubble 2.0 ?
Few areas have shown the growth or the robustness that lead generation has. Rising from not just relative obscurity but the dregs of credibility, the model and those in the space have shown they belong in front and among the top tier of... More...

What Will Google Do Now?
MySpace and Google have always garnered their fare share of press, and the level of inherent interest has only increased upon the announcement of their 39 month, almost one billion dollar deal to work together More...

Ad Marketplaces
Google’s almost billion dollar pact with Murdoch’s News Corp and AOL’s accidentally opening of the keyword kimono stole thunder, and in case of the first perhaps intentionally, from one of the most potentially disruptive trends in... More...

And a Pony
A colleague in the office has hooked me on a particular phrase, “…and a Pony!” Jeff Atwood coined the phrase and first published on his Coding Horrors blog at the beginning of this year. Those who avidly follow the... More...

The Breaking Point
Reading that the mortgage banking lead generation vertical might be showing increased signs of contraction will worry some people and have others pleased. For those who make their living off the vertical, they see the potential... More...

For Buzz or Money
In the Internet advertising world today, there is buzz, and then there is money. Buzz is what we see with the latest Web 2.0 site that seems to offer something cool, one that looks to make it's return sometime in the future. Buzz sites ranges... More...

Direct Response In A Behavioral Marketing World
If Google is the king of search, then MySpace is the king of the impression. Analysts, journalists, and all other sorts of “ists” have for years closely tracked the percentage of queries that each of the major search engines receives, but... More...

“What If” Acquisitions - Future of Auto Buying/Selling
I think many of us dream about getting a new car; we listen to the radio and will pay attention to the deals and see both the national and regional advertisements. The problem with this is that I believe most people do not buy... More...

Power Law Functions - Explaining “The Tail”
At some point last year, I realized just how little I knew about the Internet. I had lived in a world that dealt originally with email advertising in newsletters to registration paths. I grew up, if you will, in a time where search had yet to prove More...

Exitcution: The “150/100” Challenge, Part 1
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes, “There is a concept in cognitive psychology called the channel capacity, which refers to the amount of space in our brain for certain kinds of information.” Channel capacity helps explain why... More...

What If mergers
Summer seems to bring with it more than just warmer weather. It also seems to bring with it increased activity in mergers and acquisitions. This time last year, we saw within a sixty day window deals that included Valueclick buying... More...

VendareNetblue - Before they were one, Part 1
Almost reminiscent of movie releases where studios carefully plan out their launch dates to maximize their exposure, you can almost imagine the behind the scenes dialogue of this week’s Internet studio blockbuster. Last week... More...

The Funding of Adware
In several past articles, I have often compared Adware to Email, two highly lucrative areas of Internet marketing whose unfettered growth ultimately led it to the brink of collapse. Similar to the complaints against email marketing... More...

Edu-adventures: Connecting Two Worlds
This week marks the third year that Eduventures, a market research and consulting firm for education institutions, has put on their Competing in Higher Education tradeshow. With only a handful of lead generation firms at the show... More...

Upsetting The Status Quo
Competition can sneak up on a company when they don’t expect it and from a direction they would not have seen coming. One example, which may only illustrate my appreciation for Revenue Science, as opposed to point being... More...

Delving into CPA Search
There are few online businesses that I would want to create less than a new search engine. Unless it involves China, user generated content, and/or video, chances are the media and others will treat the launch about as serious as... More...

Checking In With Online Education
The last piece I wrote about online lead generation covered the basics of lead generation and arose out of an agency/broker’s desire to get a CPA price quote for an unnamed school. Instead of... More...

The Internet Land Grab
When you are making a lot of money, you probably don’t care whether the Wall Street Journal covers your industry or even your company. The validation might be nice, but whether they cover it or not doesn’t impact the success of the... More...

Affiliate Marketing vs. Network Marketing
I remember my mother buying Amway soap during my childhood. I didn’t quite understand how the organization functioned then, and I still don’t today. Amway, now re-branded as Quixtar falls in the multi-level marketing category... More...

Lead Generation 1.0
In today’s Digital Thoughts we expose how a site like eBay can remove information asymmetry and shed light on an area that typically remains hidden. More...

MetaReward. Dropping the Rewards.
In Internet Advertising 2006 - The Year That Will Be, I said, “Incentive marketing will change. Users love free iPods, and the aggregate of remnant inventory will still be incredibly large, but the day of the email / zip offer will... More...

Caveat blogger, Part 2
Part One of Caveat Blogger (located here), our coverage of the issues surrounding employees who keep blogs, provides the context and introduces some of the more salient points that employers should keep in mind, and... More...

Blogging in the Corporate World - The Company Blog, Part 2
In Part 1 of Blogging in the Corporate World, we discussed the significance of blogs, who has a company blog, and the different implementations of them. In Part 2 we conclude our look at the company blog landscape first with an... More...

The Components Of Conversions
Being focused more on the lead generation side of online advertising I often view the world myopically. That was the case last week until I received a question that warranted some additional perspective. This reader wanted to... More...

The Shakeup
Two weeks ago, I began “A Rebuttal in Favor of Ad Networks” with the following, “There is a shakeup coming in the education lead generation landscape, and it’s being led by one of the largest buyers of leads and one of... More...

The Price Fallacy - Economics of Lead Generation
Each day, people like myself receive countless requests to promote a particular cost per acquisition offer. Those pitching the offers all too often give in to the temptation to point out how the offer has an unlimited budget. That is... More...

The Price Fallacy
Wal-Mart sold more than three-hundred billion dollars worth of goods last year, in other words, almost one-billion dollars per day in revenue. On any day, the company will earn more than the yearly revenue of Advertising.com, ValueClick... More...

A Rebuttal in Favor of Ad Networks
I must admit; this week I wanted to cover what will be a hot topic in the weeks to follow. There is a shakeup coming in the education lead generation landscape, and it’s being led by one of the largest buyers of leads and one of... More...

Effectiveness in Lead Generation
As initially covered in Anatomy of a Lead Gen Industry, the business of lead generation can be broken down into three main components: More...

Super Bowl of Ads - Strategies
Aside from the Presidential Election, it’s not often that almost 91 million people in the US alone congregate for a single event. The Super Bowl is the highest rated television show of the year and arguably the best day in all of advertising... More...

A Tale Of Two Acquisitions
Direct Response wasn’t the only company in the news this week because of an acquisition. In what could be construed as a case of one-upmanship, Think Partnership, the parent company of competitor affiliate network solutions More...

Internet Advertising 2005 - The Year That Was
In 2004, our industry grew 32.5% to roughly $9.6 billion, a record for Internet advertising, and higher than expected. While the number for 2005 hasn’t been reported, most expect it to easily exceed $12 billion, which would equate to a second year of 30+%... More...

What Is Affiliate Marketing?
In her opening keynote address at Affiliate Summit, Anne Holland of Marketing Sherpa, said that affiliate marketing bounties and commissions will reach $6.5 billion in 2006, or roughly 40% of projected 2006 online advertising expenditures. As she writes... More...

A Tulip by Any Other Name
Students of history will remember the Dutch Tulip Mania that swept the country from 1634 through the beginning of 1637. At one point in time, a single tulip bulb went for the equivalent of 1000 pounds of cheese or even four tons of wheat. The rise of... More...

Can One Company Control More Than one Lead Gen Vertical?
In “Finding the Sweet Spot,” last week’s article on the Internet advertising acquisition landscape, we grouped the majority of activity along four main lines - lead generation, comparison shopping, content networks, and ad/affiliate... More...

Accountability Online
People blog for a variety of reasons, for many, it offers a chance to be heard, to be discovered, and to network. If you are really good you can even make money along with making an impact. I started blogging for a similar reason, vanity, or better said... More...

All That’s Fit to Google
In what feels like ages ago, yet in actuality occurred only two months ago, NASA and Google publicly announced their intent to work together. Having already conquered cyberspace, a milestone seemingly capped by Google’s successful hiring of the “father... More...

Thinking about Leadership, Part Two
In Part One, we highlighted the importance of leadership in any economic environment but especially in an ultra-competitive one such as ours, and we mentioned how strong leadership doesn’t guarantee success but it will be... More...

Thinking about Leadership, Part One
Next week, it’s our big conference, and what we will see are the results of a hot and growing Internet advertising market - more exhibitors and attendees, more press, more bankers, and most importantly, more competition. None of these, especially the... More...

Digital Thoughts: The Evolution of an Expo
It’s not always intentional, but it seems that whenever I go to a tradeshow, despite my best efforts, I end up writing an article about it. That certainly happened as a result of my last trade show experience. It involved a visit to New York City for Advertising Week. More...

Digital Thoughts: Bridging the Gap, Part Two
For better and worse, our industry possesses some unique traits that, at the moment, enable a variety of employees to effectively live two work lives. With one group, the biggest threat does not involve trade secrets and conflict of interest so much as the precedent it sets. More...

Digital Thoughts: Bridging the Gap, Part One
If you made it to the end of last week’s Digital Thoughts, you will have read that other companies are waiting to take your talent, and you’re the only one that can prevent that. More...

Digital Thoughts - The Gap
Eleven months ago at Ad:Tech New York 2004, everyone had smiles on their faces. The crop of acquisitions harvested this year had yet to fully ripen, but the relief from having weathered three and a half years of bad weather was more than evident. As we approach... More...

Digital Thoughts - AOL-MSN or is it MSN-AOL?
AOL earned more than a billion dollars last year on advertising revenues and will earn even more this year. A healthy chunk of those ad revenues come from search, and no surprise to those in our industry, AOL’s search revenues come from Google... More...

Digital Thoughts - TradeShow Valuation, Part 2
When I set out for New York City early this week, I had an idea that I would write about the tradeshows. In the past, that has meant a descriptive account of the goings on, not an attempt to ascertain the value of going in the first place. Intrigued by... More...

Digital Thoughts - TradeShow Valuation - Part 1
You won’t find it on the calendar. No official date exists, but with Advertising Week almost complete, one that included MediaPost’s OMMA East and the IAB’s MIXX-Expo in New York City not to mention iMedia’s Brand Summit in Coronado Bay, California, it’s safe to... More...

Digital Thoughts - Boom Times
When they opened their doors in 1997, Amazon made $147,000. By the end of 1998, they earned $600,000 rising to $1.6 billion by 1999. At the end of 2000, Amazon generated $2.7 billion in revenues. During the boom years, Amazon managed to go from nothing... More...

Digital Thoughts - Hurricane Katrina, Part Two
Anyone who has not been in a cave without any form of media has seen the almost incomprehensible destruction the waters have had on parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. For many reasons, this tragedy is unlike any other most of us have ever experienced... More...

Digital Thoughts - Looking For Katrina, Part One
This week saw one of the more unexpected and larger transactions of the year. After two week’s of little news on the acquisition front, one of Japan’s largest internet firms, Rakuten, announced its intent to purchase affiliate network pioneer and last... More...

Digital Thoughts - Extra Credit Part 2
The idea behind credit and a credit score is a good one. It means a reduced reliance on cash and a way for consumers to leverage their past behavior. For lenders it means having a tool to help gauge an applicant’s loan worthiness. The credit... More...

Digital Thoughts - Extra Credit
There exists one thing that follows us around wherever we go, impacts our adult life at all phases, yet we have little to no access to it, little idea how it gets measured, and little control over it. Three companies control it, one of whom just... More...

Digital Thoughts - The Many Faces Of Google
If I were the number one search engine in the world, I’m not sure that I would allow many queries to show my number one competitor’s web site as the first listing, all while not showing any paid listings. MSN doesn’t do this. Yahoo doesn’t do this. So why... More...

Digital Thoughts - Far East
It’s not often that deals in our industry top nine figures, and it is even rarer when those deals involve Internet ventures outside of the United States. Such a transaction occurred this week when Yahoo announced its intent to purchase a stake in China’s... More...

Digital Thoughts - State of the Union
Arbitrage is a word that gets bandied about freely these days; it’s an activity that has transcended the financial world where it began to become the de-facto means for making money online. At its core, the activity describes the absorption of... More...

Digital Thoughts - The Sleeping Giant
ConsumerInfo.com, MetaReward, Cheetahmail, LowerMyBills.com, ClassesUSA, and Affiliate Fuel all have something in common, and it isn’t email, CPA, or “dot com”. The answer is their now parent company, Experian. While Experian formally... More...

Digital Thoughts - The CEO Handbook
Rupert Murdoch is here, and his entry is a sign of more purchases to come. No such event happened in time for this week’s publication, a fact that remedies itself, though, next week with coverage of Experian’s purchase of... More...

Digital Thoughts - Part 2 - Music To Their Ears
During eUniverse’s ultimately turbulent fiscal year 2003, they acquired direct marketing focused Response Base, a company run by Chris DeWolfe, who along with the other co-founder of MySpace.com, Tom Anderson, had also worked at XDrive.com... More...

Digital Thoughts - Part 1 - A, B, C, D, eUniverse
Less than a week after announcing that it had settled its spyware related trespassing lawsuit with Elliot Spitzer, Intermix Media again made headlines. This time, though, the headlines involved Intermix gaining a substantial amount of money as... More...

Digital Thoughts - A Crash Course in the Vendor Landscape - Part 2
The first half of the newsletter version of “A Crash Course in the Vendor Landscape” covered the display ad network space and three areas that overlapped with it - ad serving, contextual / behavioral ad providers, and adware. We also covered ad rep firms... More...

Digital Thoughts - A Crash Course in the Vendor Landscape - Part 1
This past Monday, Cliff Kurtzman, from Online-Ads, and I gave a presentation during Ad:Tech Chicago 2005 called, “A Crash Course on the Digital Marketing Vendor Landscape,” a talk that tried to untangle what some of those even in our space... More...

Digital Thoughts - Legal victory for WhenU
This year, one topic in our industry has arguably drawn more attention than almost any other. From its effectiveness for advertisers, to its ability to frustrate consumers, as well as its almost disproportionate influence on the yearly internet advertising ecosystem, adware stands, for better or worse, in a league of its own More...

Digital Thoughts - Plausible Deniability
Those looking for a stock tip probably should have wagered on Intermix recovering, which it did after announcing roughly two weeks ago that it had settled its spyware suit brought on by Elliot Spitzer. Besides paying $7.5 million, the company also... More...

Digital Thoughts - Keeping Up With The End User
Sometimes a seemingly random occurrence can lead to one’s viewing the world differently. That experience happened recently when observing a seven year-old girl skip through commercials with the help of a digital video recorder (DVR). Until that moment... More...

Digital Thoughts - The Machine
Working in the direct response lead generation and incentive promotion space can skew one’s perspective on life. The way we evaluate businesses differs from the average person. We look at the world in terms of traffic flow and monetization. We look for... More...

Digital Thoughts - McEducation
Last week, Boston played host to a small education related conference. Attended by mainly universities interested in trends in the post-secondary market, it remains largely unattended by those in our space. Similar to Ad:Tech, the show... More...

Digital Thoughts - Cost And Immediacy
Close your eyes for a minute. Picture yourself as an average net user, one that checks email, goes to Yahoo and Google - a person that might spend a maximum of one hour per day online. Such a person reads magazines, drives on the road, More...

Digital Thoughts - A Tale of Two Pixels
The incentive promotion space drives an inordinate amount of users into registration paths. The absolute breadth of the promotions and the speed to market with new incentive promotions has no peers in mainstream advertising. Everybody creating and... More...

Digital Thoughts - Google Casts A Semantic Web
Many of have wondered what the future has in store for Google. Will they become the next Microsoft - an enormous profit machine embedded into our lives and directly controlling how many of us compute? Might Google, today’s high flier.... More...

Digital Thoughts - Adware In The Steps Of Email
In a recent issue of Digital Thoughts, we covered the central themes of Hardball, a book by George Stalk, Jr., and Rob Lachenauer. As they write, “Winners in business play rough and don’t apologize for it.” While playing rough often means... More...

Digital Thoughts - Acquisition and Retention
Sometimes, certain acts in the “real” world unfold in a way that lead a person in our line of work to wonder how those same events would have transpired were the equivalent levels of measurability and accountability used to run our business also used by others. More...

Tchotchkes
While a great event, Ad:Tech often feels mandatory rather than an event we elect to do. In the past, the show has felt more like a pause from getting work done rather than a chance to expand business. Not so this year. More...

Digital Thoughts - California Here I come!
In a few days, a great many of us will congregate in San Francisco for Ad:Tech. It used to be that going to Ad:Tech meant time off and drinking more than one should on “work nights.” More...

Digital Thoughts - Growing Pains
While not directly connected to the topic discussed in this week’s Trends Report, the purchase of CDT by 180 Solutions touches upon a topic that I would wager many in this space have faced - growth. With the successes of 2004, many in our space found themselves rapidly hiring... More...