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"FB": End of an Era or the Beginning of a New One?
Upon the recent news of an imminent filing by Facebook to (finally) go public, a performance marketer quipped on one of the more prominent forums, "Well, there goes another good site." It was an interesting observation and not in keeping with the mainstream press and... More...

Is It Over Already?
News came out earlier this week about Gilt Groupe cutting 10% of its staff. Funnily enough, when the news came out, some of the more shocking news focused on the companies purported decision to eliminate its free snacks. Forget cutting back on people, you know a... More...

Speaking of SOPA. How about Flog 3.0
For most of the informed world, talk of SOPA has them thinking about the impact on Google, YouTube, Facebook, and countless other popular sites that could be negatively impacted by what is being called the "guilty until proven... More...

What’s Old is New - Part 2
The nostalgic in us couldn't help but smile when we found not just an ad for an incentive promotion (ok, Free iPod) offer but the type of ad. The simple banner read, “You Have (1) New Message.” It's ad text that has literally been... More...

There's Something Happening Here
After the slightly psychedelic guitar intro supposedly reminiscent of a police siren, Buffalo Springfield's famous song begins, "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear." Written in the 60's by... More...

Knowing versus Doing
For many reasons, those in the interactive space have a love to hate relationship with those who have their MBA's, especially those from certain prestigious universities. Unlike other professions, graduate degrees are anything but required in the ad-tech space. Most companies will gladly trade... More...

Not As Bad as it Looks - Your Job Application
At times, it feels as though you can divide up the performance marketing world into a few groups. Those who are deliberately shady and those who are not. Those who receive deliberately shady traffic accidentally, and those who do not. Even the best and biggest businesses will receive some... More...

Lead Gen the Dirty Word
Talking to a company the other day, something interesting was said. They said, we have given up the word lead generation. "We don’t use it internally and we don’t use it when talking to clients." When asked how they make their money, they said to us, "lead generation." Let’s repeat that. You aren't a lead... More...

Are We Too Cynical or Just Jealous
One of our favorite publications is Business Insider. Every direct marketer should read them not for information in the customer acquisition space but for their headlines. It is almost unfair how catchy they make their titles and the open / clicks that come as... More...

When to Think about Your Next Business
I forget where we heard this, but a famous author and researcher asked people to go to the bookstore, either online or in that old thing called a bookstore, to count the number of titles that have the word happy in them. The question alone suggests... More...

Affiliate 2.0
Here is a performance marketing pop quiz. What is the difference between one who does SEO and one who does PPC? The former is likely to not mind the label affiliate, while the latter will say they are anything but. The distinction sounds... More...

A Lagging Indicator?
Like any good, or in this case bad, arbiter of our future, we look to the market to help explain life and know how to feel. What we get in return is an emotional roller coaster that is only partially correlated to our actual well-being. It's variable payout nature... More...

Life in A Transparent World
Every industry has its secrets, its tricks of the trade, those skills, places, or people of which some people have knowledge and others don't. These trade secrets have played a particularly large role in the success of many in the performance marketing... More...

The Groupon Forest Through the Trees
Mixing way too many metaphors, we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for the group buying space. When we look back to 2009, we had very few entrants. Then, the number of entrants simply exploded. It's not surprising, though, as once... More...

Cliff Notes - the World according to Thomas Friedman
As one who write multiple articles per week and has done so pretty much fifty weeks per year for the past six years, it is hard not to admire professional writers like Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, and Guy Kawaski who have not only a seemingly... More...

F'in Fraud
For all the crap that we occasionally dish on the CPA network space, one thing we hopefully have never intimated is that running a network is easy. While we have no shortage of people who enter the space with no experience only to find ways to make impressive money, once they make the plunge to running a... More...

Secrets to User Acquisition - Users
There is a particular author that we have long been a fan. While not a household name, for those who have read his work, it has in many cases profoundly changed the way they approach their business. He's not a popularist like Seth Godin or an amalgamist.. More...

The Second Internet
The digital space moves so fast, that a notion of a set release schedule has become a foreign concept. It's not like cars where you have not only different models, but each model has a model year. This suite of products offers the manufacturers a great... More...

Too Big to Fail or Too Big to Succeed Part 2
Last week we found ourselves comparing two unlikely companies, Yahoo and Groupon, not so much for any inherent similarities, so much as timing brought them together in the news. Yahoo fired it's chief executive and finds itself potentially... More...

Shameless Plug - Daily Deal Summit West 2011
All this talk of the daily deal space has reminded us that we have not had a proper shameless plug in quite some time - no solo emails, no major plugs in articles, or the like. Well, it's time to rectify that. We expect to see you two weeks from today in San... More...

For Love or Money
Our industry has struggled with many things. The performance marketing and cpa network in particular continue to fight for legitimacy and prove that businesses in the space offer a long-term value proposition. The reason it struggles is because... More...

Thinking about Brands and Leads... Again
The term brands is in and of itself a tricky word, as the definition of a brand is fairly ambiguous and broad. Companies large and small are brands, from Apple (can you believe Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO?) to BeeBeverly Hills who became... More...

The New (Old) Hot Careers
When we first started in the online business, the world of internet advertising had just started to gain traction. It hadn't really made any money, and the notion of careers such as paid search manager or social media analyst where still years away. It was... More...

Agency vs. Network
A few weeks ago, we received the dream call. We had one of the hottest customer acquisition brands contact us for our advice. They wanted the names of the affiliate agencies they could interview. Had they asked for just about anything else, we... More...

Can You Sell Me Now - Yahoo and Display
Not too long ago, we talked about an experience that almost everyone has gone through at some point in time - being a part of what can only be described as a sinking ship. The overly dramatic analogy that came to mind at the time was the... More...

Lessons in Scale from AGT
On multiple occasions in the past, we have admitted our prediction for consuming more tv than the average person in our industry does. Then again, given that so many people seem to have abandoned any form of live television, watching more than... More...

Revenue Versus Profit - Why Staying in Business Is Even Harder
Slim margins, fast payouts, and very slow payments are some of the biggest issues facing the sustainability of most networks. Add that to the challenges finding good sustainable traffic, and good sustainable offers, and the result is a business with a lot of... More...

The Mobile App Ecosystem Enters the 2000's
If a business wants to command a powerful position, it should become the gateway by which others can access traffic and users. Google did this with search. Their dominance in search translated to a stranglehold on traffic. Facebook has... More...

Google and Social - Do They Compute?
We remember coming across a presentation by a Google employee that made its way viral, leading many to presume that the company was hard at work on a competitor to Facebook. What we didn’t realize is that this presentation by Paul Adams, a... More...

What Does “Direct” Mean?
Our Q&A with Wicks Walker of W4 fame had us, not surprisingly, thinking about the current state of the CPA network and overall performance marketing space. A decent portion of our thinking was influenced by a recent conversation we had with a network... More...

The Auto Insurance Lead Crisis Part 2
Last week, we talked about a growing issue within the auto insurance lead generation market. The crisis as we describe is the influx of fraudulent leads into the system, but not just a small number. These fraudulent leads are like a denial of service attack on those who sell leads to agents directly. A group of... More...

Auto Insurance Liquidity Crisis
Sometimes we hear about craziness in an industry, and it's almost too complex to cover. The details make you scratch your head and want to keep asking questions. And, when you finally think you understand what is going on, you realize that you... More...

Fraud and Compliance - The Double Edged and Necessary Pain in The Ass
When we think about the value of performance-based companies, as we did in our other piece this week, we think about why the outside world doesn't value us in the same light. I suspect, though, that the vast majority of network owners really... More...

The Edu Conundrum
If we could, we would like to create a performance marketing index, not one that tries to guess at the total revenues of those running cost per action ads, but one that could truly answer the question of what are the best offers. Each network tends to send out emails suggesting what to run, but knowing that their... More...

Extreme Arbitraging?
If you don’t watch television, there is a good chance you will not have heard of this new show. To learn that it is a reality show probably wouldn’t come as a surprise, though. We watch many shows, reality and non, but certain reality shows we just can’t... More...

The Workcation
Writing about work portability, but more specifically flexibility of location, reminds us of what a friend calls the "workcation", which as the name might imply comes from combining work and vacation. It's more than just packing up your work from some... More...

CPA Network. No. CPC!
Performance marketing has always been about that, performance, which explains why historically, those servicing the sector, e.g., networks and aggregators focused on the furthest point along the funnel, namely a lead or a sale. It was a point of... More...

The This For That
One of the best guilty pleasures, not to mention one of the best products we have ever come across, is Angel List. In fact, we can’t decide which part we like more, their unique coverage or the fact that their own iterative innovation is a living playbook for... More...

Flogs and Farticles - The Crackdown Begins Day 2
"FTC Cracks Down on Fake News Websites Used to Advertise Acai Berry Weight-Loss Pills." The follow-on title reiterates that message but ads in new important details, saying, "FTC Seeks to Halt 10 Operators of Fake News Sites from Making Deceptive Claims About Acai Berry Weight Loss Products." More...

Flogs and Farticles - The Crackdown Begins Day 1
On what has historically been tax day, April 15th, the FTC sought to impose a tax of its own, this time against those associated with fake blogs and fake news sites. Last year, we said that it was not a matter of if but when the FTC would take... More...

Too Taboo to Talk Tatto?
As is often the case around the time of a trade show, sometimes the biggest news happens outside of the event and not on its stages. That seems apt in this case, where before ad:tech San Francisco opened, it became known that one of the conference's... More...

Affiliate Tax: Industry Under Attack - Part 2
As we were first wrapping our heads around the affiliate nexus tax, one of the first questions we had was trying to figure out how it would be implemented. For example, if a consumer clicks on an affiliate link where the affiliate resides in a state with the... More...

Why Tablets Are Big Business
One look at Apple's sales figures make the above point almost moot. Whoever guessed that they would sell millions upon millions was certainly better than us at guessing the demand. A quick search showed an article which estimated that Apple... More...

A Life So Fragile: Natural Disaster Japan
The news started trickling in last Friday just before 3pm EST. A magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck Japan leaving not only in its wake 50 plus aftershocks but a path of destruction, the result of a tsunami triggered from the earthquake. As the Huffington Post... More...

Shameless Daily Deal Summit Plug - Week 4
Can you believe how the time flies? Not two weeks have passed, and so it begins. Shameless plug time. The beauty about the shameless plug is its transparency. The problem with trying to be cute and sneak in a plug is that you will see right through that. That's why when it comes to promotional pieces... More...

Billion Dollar Email Submits
The other day, we had the chance to meet one of our idols. Unlike most normal human beings this idol works in the online advertising space. They aren't famous. They do have lots of money, but their wealth has nothing to do with what makes them... More...

(Less) Shameless LeadsCon Plug: Week 5 - Consolidation
It is now less than two weeks until LeadsCon, that means a few things, one of which is a slow transition back towards content about direct response not direct response focused content. Then again, perhaps if we find a way to craft another show in between... More...

The Week in Review
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Shameless LeadsCon Plug: Week 4 - Beyond Shameless
Four weeks ago today, we started writing with a simple idea in mind. To increase interest in an upcoming event about which we want to see succeed; but do so in way that were we not to say what we were doing, it wouldn't seem like we were doing what... More...

IE Loses Europe, Chrome Surpasses 10% Share Worldwide; ‘Do Not Track’ Issues Loom
According to the latest figures from StatCounter, Microsoft's Internet Explorer lost its crown as the top Web browser in Europe in December More...

Mobile Ad Awareness Booms in 2009-10, Purchase Intent Dips
According to the latest numbers from Millennial Media, mobile campaign effectiveness has risen by most metrics in the last three years, while smart phones are more conducive to campaigns than feature phones. More...

Online Video Viewers Pay More Attention to Ads Than TV Viewers Do
According to a recent report released by YuMe, a video advertising technology company, marketers who are not in on the online video boom are missing out on a "tremendous opportunity." More...

Facebook Continues to Gobble Up Visitors and Time
According to Compete, the gap between Yahoo, the No. 2 site, and Facebook, the No. 3 site, continues to shrink. Other data show similar growth for Facebook, in terms of visitors and time spent on its site. More...

The Week in Review
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If Content Isn't King, What Is?
If we think back to some of the endearing trends of the internet age, one that has come and gone and perhaps come again says content is king. When someone asks for advice when starting an online site, that's what most... More...

Nearly 90% of Marketers Will Pursue Mobile Marketing in 2011
A new survey from the Association of National Advertisers, along with the MMA, found that nearly nine in 10 marketers will pursue mobile marketing this year. More...

Google Android is the Leading Smart-Phone Platform in the World
According to the latest quarterly numbers published by Canalys, a technology market data, analysis and advice company, More...

The Week in Review
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Dot Arbitrage
One of the easiest ways to date yourself in the industry is to talk about the ClassesUSA MSN deal. To put it into context, this deal happened so long ago that Mark Zuckerberg had maybe left middle school and Google didn't... More...

Shameless LeadsCon Plug: Share Leads?
Imagine a thought provoking article about a topic of interest, but it just so happens that the piece in question ties really nicely into a not so subtle plug to attend an event covering similar topics. If you can't... More...

An Unlikely Source of Inspiration
People who move to New York City do so for the same types of reasons that compel people to move to any other city, generally a combination of love, work, school, family, or longing. When it... More...

The Week in Review
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The Magic of the Feed and the Follow
With a stack of business cards in tow, besides sending follow-up emails, one of the next steps for those coming back from a tradeshow, e.g., the just completed Affiliate Summit West, will be to figure out where to add this person... More...

Coupons vs. Deals
The public stock markets make it very easy to separate those who had a good year from those who did not. As is the case with the... More...

The Week in Review
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Mobile Ad Revenues to Reach $1.2 Billion in 2011
According to Smaato, a mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company, expects a big year for mobile applications in 2011. Its "Mobile Advertising Trends 2011" slideshow sheds light on many of its big expectations in the coming year. More...

The Week in Review
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The Year That Was: Best of The Rest
It's a great year, when a company that almost sold for six billion dollars and reached a billion dollar valuation faster than any other takes second place to a seven year old company. (Then again, there's... More...

The Week in Review
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Tracking vs. Sharing
Almost six months ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, "The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets." They prefaced the piece by saying, "A Journal investigation finds that one of"... More...

Android Continues to Surge, as Desirable as iPhone Devices
According to the latest MobiLens report from comScore, smart phones are now owned by a quarter of all mobile subscribers, and Android is continuing its greedy surge in the smart-phone OS market. More...

A Majority of Users Ignore Internet Ads More Than Other Ads
Despite the Internet's heralded usefulness for targeting ads and reaching the right consumers, a recent Adweek Media/Harris Poll survey found that the majority of adults in the U.S. say they disregard Internet ads more than they ignore ads on other media. More...

Online Shoppers Are More Responsive to Paid-Search Ads This Holiday Season
According to Kenshoo's "2010 Online Holiday Shopping Report," search advertising budgets and total online sales transactions were both up during the 26-day period ending with Cyber Monday from their levels last year. More...

Online Ad Spending Will Boom to $28.5 Billion in 2011
According to eMarketer, the continually struggling economy will direct ad dollars toward the Internet. This means that after shrinking in 2009, U.S. online ad spending is set to see healthy growth for the next several years. More...

The Plurality Effect
The story of Groupon's potential sale has us thinking about, not just whether it makes sense for the rumored acquirer, Google, or if we are about to see a battle between Facebook and Google not... More...

Android Ad Impressions Are Surging
According to Millennial Media's Mobile Mix report for October, mobile ad requests on Android devices grew 65 percent month-over-month, while requests on Apple devices grew 12 percent. Also, among smart phones, Android has pulled even with Apple iOS in terms of market share. More...

Social Media is Top Priority in 2011 for PPC and SEO
During a webinar given by Craig Macdonald, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of SEM and SEO software and agency services provider Covario, two surveys were taken to gauge the top PPC and SEO priorities for advertisers in 2011. Not surprisingly, social media was a big part of both responses. More...

The Week in Review
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Voluntary Identity Theft
The other day, we had a phone call with someone that does what every successful performance marketer looks forward to doing - investing in others. On the surface, it sounds like such a fun job... More...

The Week in Review
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Puppies and Babies in Ads Tug at Heart Strings
The next time you think about what to include in your ads, see if you can fit in some puppies or babies. According to a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Adweek Media, puppies and babies draw positive reactions when seen in ads. More...

Christmas Spending Forecast in November Up from Last Year
As of November, each American consumers expects to spend $76 more this Christmas than they expected to spend last year, according to a recent Gallup poll. More...

Musical Affiliates
Affiliate Networks have always been plagued with fraud. Most of the times foreigners try to sign up and either run very little traffic and 'fly under the radar' or run a massive amount for a short time and in both cases hope they get paid. More...

Apples to Apples and Acai to Acai
Arbitrage is driven on traffic, and cpa network revenues are for a large part driven by the successful acquisition of traffic. Sometimes, you don't need new publishers or new advertisers. Sometimes, you need new traffic. More...

The Week in Review
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E-mail Marketing Takes Half of Marketers' Time
E-mail marketing and company websites are the most used marketing channels, and e-mail marketing takes up nearly half of marketers' time, according to a study from Lyris, an online marketing company. More...

The Week in Review
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The Rise of Call Verified
Throughout all of the ups and downs of 2009 and 2010, one piece of the performance marketing puzzle has kept chugging along, almost enjoying its under the radar status, co-reg. It's a world of... More...

What Is A Startup?
Less than a week from today a large portion of the internet advertising community will convene in New York City. It's not for the screening of Mad Men, and unlike last year it won't involve... More...

Gambling, Business/Finance, Education, Career, Hosting Sites Surge in September
The latest figures from comScore show that gambling sites picked up some serious steam in September, while Google Sites overtook Yahoo Sites as the top online property in the U.S. during the month. More...

Nearly a Third of American Travelers Will Spend More on Holiday Travel This Year
According to the latest "American Express Spending & Saving Tracker" report, nearly a third of Americans planning on traveling this holiday season expect to boost their spending this year compared to last year. More...

Majority of Advertisers Will Ignore Location-Based Advertising in 2011
According to recent data from STRATA, a media-buying and -selling software provider, more than half of advertisers surveyed said that location-based advertising will not be in their plans in 2011. More...

iPad Owners Likely to Make Purchase Post-Ad, Purchase Apps
According to a stack of data about connected devices from Nielsen, iPad owners are receptive to ads, and are more likely than owners of other connected devices to make a purchase after viewing an ad. More...

The Week in Review
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The Biggest News We've Yet to Hear of?
For many people, 1998 was a banner year, smack in the middle of the internet boom and graduates who knew programming were getting insane job offers. It was not a great year for... More...

The Week in Review
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Can You Spare A Penny?
When is a vertical a vertical? Is it when the first page of Google AdWords is taken by look a like companies? Is it when a competitor enters the market with a URL of... More...

US Ad Spending is Growing
Recent figures released by Nielsen show that ad spending is growing in the U.S., though not across all sectors. While automotive-related categories appear to be bouncing back in huge ways, others have seen spending cut back from the same period last year. More...

Two-Word Queries Are the Most Popular in September
Experian Hitwise recently unveiled its most recent search engine numbers, which show that Google remains way ahead of the pack, Bing-powered search lost some of its piece of the pie and that two-word queries were the most popular in September. More...

Social Games Rivaling Prime-Time TV Shows
Are social games killing prime-time television? According to recent numbers from smartphone application analytics and monetization platform Flurry, it might not be such a farfetched notion. More...

The Week in Review
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Performance Marketing in the Real World
For whatever reason, if you happen to live in the eastern two-thirds of the country and have a significant amount of Membership Rewards points, chances are you have spent some... More...

The Week in Review
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@earlybird didn't get the worm
If you've been to a conference and gone to a session, chances are you have had this complaint, that the person didn’t share enough useful information. The second complaint is related... More...

The Facebook Opportunity
Hyper-growth platforms create opportunities for peripheral business models to flourish. Facebook has already provided fertile ground for fantastically successful businesses like Zynga, Playdom/Disney, and Playfish/EA. More...

Mobile Segment is Key for 2010 Holiday Season
Among the highlights of Millennial Media's S.M.A.R.T. Report for August is the finding that more than a quarter of mobile subscribers accessing retail content on their phones cannot be reached online or offline, which points to the importance for advertisers to reach this new audience through mobile. More...

What to Know About Search Marketing for the Holidays
We haven't even reached October yet but it's never too early to start planning for Christmas - is it? Not according to Martin Software, which recently released "The Search Marketer's Guide for the Holidays: Ten Tips for a Successful 2010." More...

Transaction Problems Cost Online Retailers $44 Billion
According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Tealeaf, an online customer experience management software provider, online retailers may have lost an enormous amount of money due to transaction problems on their websites. More...

Retail Sites Are Strong in August
Thanks to the end of summer and the start of back-to-school season, the retail industry had a strong August, according to data from both Compete and comScore. More...

DRTV Online - If or When?
As we have all too often been guilty of saying, it doesn't take a genius to have predicted that some of the marketing tactics used to promote free trials of nutraceuticals would come under... More...

Causes Are Important to Consumers
If you're looking for a new way to boost your brand, you might want to consider taking up a cause. According to a recent study from Cone LLC, 83 percent of Americans want more of the products, services and retailers they use to support causes. More...

The More Expensive the Purchase, the More Likely Research Happens
According to recent numbers released by Compete, consumers are more likely to research expensive items online than they are to research less expensive items. More...

Mobile Apps Overtaking Web Browsers
According to Zokem, a Finnish mobile analytics firm, mobile applications are on the verge of leapfrogging mobile Web browsers as the most popular activity on mobile phones. This is corroborated by new information released by comScore. More...

Consumer Confidence Down, Credit Card Spending Up
The latest findings from BIGresearch shows that while consumer confidence faltered a bit in September, consumers are using their credit cards more often, and are expecting to buy more items like toys, CDs and electronics heading into the holiday season. More...

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A Boom from the Boomers
Instead of harping on the negative, today, we wanted to take a deeper dive into one of the segments that many in the sector have a lot of interest, and are looking to it as one among the largest... More...

The Week in Review
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Facebook, Twitter Provide Most Engaged Viewers for Online Video Content
According to a recent quarterly report from Brightcove and TubeMogul, online video streams from newspaper sites ballooned in the second quarter of the year, while streams from magazine, music label and artist websites slowed. More...

Consumer Outlook Glum in US, Ad Markets Overseas Thriving
The economy sucks, too many people don't have jobs and the word "recovery" seems like a dream ever out of reach. More...

Free Shipping and Free Returns Entice Consumers to Buy More Online
According to recent numbers from Compete, more than eight out of 10 consumers shop online at least once a week. More...

The Week in Review
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Affiliates Behaving Badly ... Again
It is the love / hate relationship between affiliate manager and affiliate. Make money. Make me money, but don't get in trouble. Need me to look the other... More...

Sectors Under Siege
Depending on which networks' distribution lists you are on, you have probably noticed at least one or two major announcements surrounding the online education... More...

Oh, The Irony
There is a saying that presumably originates from parents who want to decrease the desire in their kids to act out in a way that jeopardizes others, applied... More...

The Aftermath
In the performance marketing world, education doesn't refer to the institutions many in our sector attended (for those that did), nor does it refer to the teams that... More...

Facebook, Google, Bank of America, Realtor.com Lead the Way
According to the latest figures from Experian Hitwise, Facebook and Google dominated the Web for the week ending Saturday, Aug. 7, while some familiar names led the travel, banking and real estate categories. More...

Seven Cows
Next week marks a staple in the performance marketing calendar, Affiliate Summit. Last year, at least three thousand, if not more, descended upon and experienced the... More...

A Sector Under Siege - Part 2
If you watched the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions For-Profit Schools: The Student Recruitment Experience, only the most unattached... More...

Google Tax
The performance marketing world has generally relied upon a fairly straightforward approach. Find / build offer; buy traffic, watch performance, tweak, and scale. Historically, the traffic... More...

Digital Coupons Doubled to More than $1 Billion
According to Coupons.com, printed savings from digital coupons doubled during the 12 months ending June 2010, with ready-to-eat cereal leading the way. More...

Verizon Wireless Smart Phones Consume Most Data, iPhone Still Dominates
By now, we're all aware of the rumors saying Apple's iPhone will make its way to Verizon Wireless around the beginning of next year. More...

Is There an Ideal Size for a Search Box?
Designing a website involves a lot of things, but how often does one think of the ideal size for a search box? More...

E-Mail is Alive, but Open Rates, Click Rates Decline
According to the latest "Email Marketing Metrics Report" from MailerMailer, its 10th version, e-mail is not dead. More...

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The Trouble with Transparency
If you took a poll of advertisers and asked them one thing they would like to change about the performance-based marketing industry, a large number, especially those.. More...

California Leads the Blogosphere
The latest figures from Sysomos show that more than half of bloggers in June fell into a single age bracket, the gender split was slightly tipped toward the fairer sex and one state ruled all other states/provinces -- by far. More...

Back-to-School Spending on the Rise
While the heat screams "summer!" each and every sweltering day, it's already time to start thinking about back-to-school shopping -- at least, according to the National Retail Federation, which recently released its "2010 Consumer Intentions and Actions Back to School" survey, conducted by BIGresearch. More...

Virtual Goods Increase Brand Awareness, Ad Awareness and Purchase Intent
Virtual goods are being pushed to the forefront of many discussions, thanks to the likes of Facebook, Zynga (and its big investor Google) and Foursquare. More...

IAB's In-App Advertising Overview
Advertising within mobile applications is, obviously, a big, emerging beast that is just beginning to rise from the waters. While Apple's devices and platforms have played the biggest hand so far, Android and BlackBerry have also been key players. More...

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In Search of the Billion Dollar Business
Our world might have a lot of companies, players, and activities, but it’s missing something, a really big success story. The brands themselves, who thrive off of more customers... More...

Cost Per Call vs. Cost Per Lead
As an advertiser in the lead generation space you probably on a continual basis are feeling the daily pains of bitter competition. More...

Bing Gains in June, Driving More Traffic in Major Verticals
According to the latest figures from Experian Hitwise, Bing gained the most market share in June More...

The Dominance of the .com TLD
Quick: what's the most popular top-level domain? More...

Social Networking Sites Visited by Nearly a Quarter of Employees
Trend Micro's latest global survey finds that nearly a quarter of employees visit social networking sites while on their companies' corporate networks. More...

Google, Social Media are Huge in Asia Pacific, with Korea Leading the Way
In two separate reports from comScore and Nielsen, Google is shown to boast the most unique visitors of any Internet property in Asia Pacific More...

The Ties That Bind
Some sayings work well as beliefs. Take Google's punchline of belief regarding not doing evil, namely that you can make money without doing evil. It works great... More...

The Week in Review
Headlines from the industry.
To receive daily updates please visit the Digital Moses fan page More...

It's The Economy Stupid
Setting aside some of the financial blow back that has happened due to certain large continuity advertisers not upholding their end of the performance marketing contract, our industry as a... More...

Slap Proof
Odds are that if you do online marketing long enough you've been slapped around. More...

The Week in Review
Headlines from the industry.
To receive daily updates please visit the Digital Moses fan page More...

Featured Product
If you live in a major city or just visit one, invariably you find yourself being approached by someone of indeterminate age selling candy, generally, in order to raise money for their high... More...

Social Media Users Concerned About Privacy but Do Little About it
According to a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by ProtectMyID.com, the vast majority of social media users express concern about their privacy, but many neglect to take simple steps toward protecting themselves online. More...

More Americans Want to Browse Web, Shop via Cell Phones
While nine out of 10 Americans have cell phones - a huge increase from just four years ago - many express a desire to take part in m-commerce, browse the Web and access e-mail by way of their mobile phones, according to the National Retail Federation. More...

Mobile Payments Will Be Huge in 2010
A recent report released by Gartner points to significant growth in the number of mobile payments in 2010. More...

The Week in Review
Headlines from the industry. To receive daily updates please visit the Digital Moses fan page More...

Liking Their Way to The Bank
Sometimes the world seems fairly straightforward. Coke. Diet Coke. One has calories. One doesn't. Simple. Easy to understand. So what about Coke Zero? Tastes like Coke. Has the calories... More...

Credit Cards, Bandwidth Get in the Way, Apps Grease the Wheels for Mobile Commerce
Mobile commerce is on the up-and-up but that doesn't mean that it has a smooth, paved path to widespread adoption. There are serious wrinkles that need ironing, according to Retrevo and a CBSNews.com article on M-commerce. More...

Yahoo and Microsoft Gain in May's Search Rankings Thanks to Contextual Search
Yahoo! and Microsoft displayed robust growth in the search market in May, but both may have gained through somewhat misleading innovation, according to comScore. More...

Internet Competes with TV for WOM Power, Conversation Catalysts Key
Though only 7 percent of brand word-of-mouth conversations happen online, many people point to the Internet as a significant WOM influencer, according to a study from Yahoo! and Keller Fay Group. More...

Facebook Users Spend More Than 6 Hours on the Site
While nearly all of the top websites in the U.S. saw fewer time spent on their pages in May, Facebook still managed to keep its users looking at its Web pages for more than six hours, according to Nielsen. More...

The Week in Review
Headlines from the industry. To receive daily updates please visit the Digital Moses fan page More...

Apple Age
For a big group of performance-marketers, a trip to the Moscone Center in San Francisco automatically conjures up associations related to April and ad:tech. For another group of patrons, the Moscone Center means something else... More...

The Week in Review
Headlines from the industry. To receive daily updates please visit the Digital Moses fan page More...

E-Mail Marketers Need to Display Understanding, Especially for Mobile Users
Who would you listen to: a friend who offers you advice every now and then, or a stranger who offers you advice every hour? Most people would take the former every time, and while this isn't the most precise metaphor for the recent findings of e-Dialog, it does highlight the company's bottom line:
- show that you know your consumer before you bombard them with messages. More...

Pre-Roll Ads Most Popular Format, Twitter Delivers Most Engaged Online Video Viewers
According to a new data released by TubeMogul and Brightcove, newspaper and magazine publishers get the highest online video viewing completion rates, while 35 percent of respondents said in-stream video ads produced the most revenue for their media businesses compared to other ad formats. More...

PC Market is Hot, Acer Closing in On HP
The global PC market has never been more explosive, according to market research company iSuppli Corp. While Hewlett-Packard remains the top dog, Acer and Dell are quickly catching up. More...

iPhone Users More Wealthy, Smitten than Android Users
Users of the iPhone are in higher income brackets and are more likely to stick with the iPhone OS with their next phone - and this was before the official unveiling of iPhone 4. More...

Threat to Debt
Debt lead generation is threatened by potential changes that will cause a drastic overhaul of the industry. This week we take a look at the threats to debt lead gen by placing proposals into context and... More...

The Week in Review
Headlines from the industry. To receive daily updates please visit the Digital Moses fan page More...

E-Commerce Grows 10% in the First Quarter
According to the latest figures from comScore, retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. grew 10 percent in the first quarter of 2010 from the same period last year, thanks mostly to upper-income consumers. More...

Click Fraud Rises for Fourth Consecutive Quarter
Click fraud on cost-per-click (CPC) sites has risen steadily each quarter for the past year, according to Click Forensics’ latest Click Fraud Index. More...

Online Ad Spending to Grow 11%, Branded Campaigns Still Going Strong
This will be a good year for online ad spending, according to eMarketer, which expects 11 percent growth this year. Video will see the biggest growth of all formats, according to the company. More...

Facebook’s Top Languages, Apps, Pages, Connect Sites
Yes, Facebook is getting a new black eye every day thanks to some kind of privacy blunder, but it hasn’t changed the fact that it’s still the most dominant social networking site More...

The Week in Review
The Week in Review: Headlines from the week. More...

Old School vs. New School
Not long ago, AOL, now aol, turned 25 years old. The company is now older than a large number of people working in the performance-based industry. There are mini-moguls of our space who wouldn't... More...

1.1 Trillion Display Ads Delivered in Q1 2010
According to the latest figures from comScore, 1.1 trillion display ads were served in the U.S. during the first three months of 2010, a significant boost from the same quarter last year. More...

Quality of Customers Service Much More Important to Online Bankers
According to comScore's recent "State of Online Banking Report," customer service for online banking is getting a lot more attention in 2010 than it was last year. More...

Mobile Ad Budgets Ballooning
Mobile ad budgets are growing by significant amounts, according to a recent study conducted by MediaPost's Center for Media Research, in conjunction with InsightExpress. More...

Microsoft Continues Strong Search Growth, Facebook Cools Off
According to The Nielsen Company, Google maintained a healthy lead in the U.S. search market in April, but Microsoft showed that it still has plenty of legs - no thanks to Bing. More...

The week in review
Week in Review. Headlines for the week. Get Daily headlines from our facebook fan page (digital moses) More...

On the Frontline of Education Part II
The "nonpartisan, public policy institute" New America has a blog on Higher Education, called Higher Ed Watch. The institute has been an outspoken critic of past changes made to the Higher... More...

Girl Power: Females Consume More Mobile Content Than Males
According to Myxer's most recent BoomBox report for April, female mobile users downloaded twice the amount of mobile entertainment content as their male counterparts. More...

Display Ad Engagement Leads to More Searches
Being able to engage users who see your display ads is obviously a good thing. More...

Android Leapfrogs iPhone OS
According to The NPD Group, Google's Android mobile operating system overtook Apple's iPhone OS in the first quarter of 2010. More...

6.7 Billion Tweets in January 2011?
According to Pingdom, Twitter handled 1.76 billion tweets in April, which reflects a 46.7 percent rise from 1.2 billion tweets in January. "Twitter is growing like crazy," according to the company, and if it keeps things up, Twitter better hope its servers are ready. More...

Cult of Personality
If you were to read the "Tough Questions" article also published this week, you could get the distinct impression that the sky is falling on certain parts of performance-based advertising. It's not quite... More...

Week in Review
Week in Review. Headlines for the week. Get Daily headlines from our facebook fan page (digital moses) More...

Don't Hate the Player
Any talk of privacy and appropriate advertising leads us to ponder one of online direct marketing's greatest vehicles, our long-lost friend the flog. We wish we had insight into the current size of the... More...

Top Retailers Send More E-Mail as Mother's Day Takes Center Stage
According to The Retail Email Blog, for the week ending Friday, April 30, top online retailers sent more e-mail than they did in the previous week, four weeks ago and in the same week last year. More...

Facebook, by the Numbers
In the midst of so much talk about Facebook and its ever-shifting privacy policies, it’s a bit refreshing to take a step back and take a look at the social networking giant’s statistics. According to Inside Facebook, the Web giant experienced solid growth in April after a sluggish March. More...

CBS has Great Month for Video in March, YouTube, Hulu Continue to Lead
The online video arena can be cut and viewed from many angles, so it comes as no surprise that YouTube, Netflix and Hulu can all be seen as leaders. More...

Bing Continues to Surge, Competing with Google in Shopping Vertical
Google may still be king of search, but Microsoft continues to see big-time success thanks to Bing, as it saw its search market share grow the most of any search engine during the past 12 months. More...

Week in Review
Week in Review. Headlines for the week. Get Daily headlines from our facebook fan page (digital moses) More...

Chucks Challenge: The Winners
The results are in! More...

Week in Review
Week in Review. Headlines for the week. Get Daily headlines from our facebook fan page (digital moses) More...

Lessons in Value Add
Despite what one of our favorite friends in the industry tells us, it is not easy making money arbitraging media. And, with the recent tightening by Facebook, the job of the arbitrager has not gotten any easier. It isn't... More...

The Price of Friendship - Part 2
In almost every article we write, we seem to talk about the uniqueness of the performance marketing space. There aren't many other areas where one person or a pair of people can start from almost nothing... More...

It's Here. The Facebook Quality Score
Poor Google, at least that's how we feel recently, given that so much of our attention has of late focused on Facebook and not the company that commands 30 to 40x of their ad dollars. The latter's platform is one... More...

More Than Meets The
In a few days time, though we don't know what to make of it, but everyone keeps talking about, Apple iPad will officially go on sale. When first announced, pundits, consumers, analysts, etc. didn't know what... More...

Feeling Blue
You wouldn't have to have read our piece last week on CPA Networks to know that they not only play a vital role in the performance marketing ecosystem, but that they... More...

Is Telemarketing the New Old Thing?
As I was walking around this past Affiliate Summit, I couldn't help but notice companies looking to buy call center generated leads. More...

Online Media Used by Nearly All Local Shoppers
According to a recent study conducted by BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, almost all Internet users in the U.S. use online media when researching local products and services. More...

Marketers Adopting Most Social Media Tactics
According to a recent study released by Unica, a marketing technology provider based in Waltham, Mass., marketers in North America are doing a pretty good job of utilizing or planning to utilize social media. More...

Week in Review
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Growing Pains
Hard to believe that more than two years has passed since the first cash for gold offer appeared as an offer on the networks. The economics looked attractive, even before the price wars took place. Users simply completed a short form, basically... More...

Facebook Freebie Crackdown Continues
The accounts vary, but unlike years past where regardless of the prognosticator, the predictions looked dire, today when it comes to how much will Facebook make, the only question is how high... More...

Regulating Debt
Some say money is the root of all evil. Outside of love, directly and indirectly, money is probably one of the most written about topics. In our space, money isn't necessarily the root of all evil... More...

Tax Sites See Boost in Traffic
As tax season nears, Internet users in the U.S. are flocking to tax-related sites, according to comScore. Travel sites also saw big increases in traffic in January. More...

Facebook Users Like to Share Content
Facebook is comfortably ahead of the social networking pack when it comes to the sharing of content, according to data provided to TechCrunch by Gigya. More...

Amazon is the Most Trusted Brand
According to Millward Brown, a market research firm, Amazon.com was the most trusted and recommended brand in the U.S. during 2009. More...

Sojern
Those of us who make our livelihoods from advertising should rank higher than the average person if measured on a scale rating ones awareness of advertising. We should also rate higher than... More...

Turk 182
While it makes sense in hindsight, at the time, circa August 2009, we found ourselves completely blown away by the size and scope of the incentive marketing space. For us, incentive marketing had always been associated... More...

The Week In Review
Headlines from the last week. More...

Try to Respect Your Channels
With all of the performance based networks, aggregators and agencies out there as well as new ones appearing seemingly almost every day.. More...

Lessons in Unsustainability
Click fraud is an interesting thing. Defining click fraud is like trying to define cheating. If you think about someone else, is that cheating? Certainly for most people if you act on such a thought, it is. So, what about click fraud? Going by... More...

Social Networks to Get $2.5 Billion in Ad Spending in 2010
Social media is no mirage, says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. Her company projects that 2010 will see continued growth of advertising spending on online social networking sites. More...

Real-Time Bidding Could be Key to Display Advertising’s Resurgence
As search advertising thrives, display ads have taken a backseat. But could a change in the bidding system for display ads help the medium make a comeback in 2010? More...

BrandBowl 2010: Doritos, Google Top Brands During Super Bowl
What do you get when you combine the power of Twitter with the blockbuster commercials run during the Super Bowl? More...

Android, Apple Gain Smartphone Market Share
Google’s Android mobile operating system and Apple’s iPhone OS are gobbling up market share while Research In Motion (RIM), Microsoft and Palm are bleeding it, according to comScore’s latest figures. More...

Headline Brief
weekly review on news around the industry More...

End of A Promotional Marketing Era
Public companies have many rules regulating how they conduct business, for many that means not just reporting revenue but also disclosing transactions of a certain nature. At the beginning of this week, one of the few publicly traded... More...

Unplanned Obsolescence
Almost all of us are part of some continuity program, be it a gym membership, internet service, or Netflix. For many of these, we as consumers accept when the charges show-up, even if we might kick ourselves... More...

Living in a Disclaimer World
When the FTC updated its guidelines for advertisers using testimonials and endorsements, it may have felt as though the FTC set out to hurt the performance marketing space. In reality, though, they began the process... More...

Notes - The New SEO
When thinking back to the most memorable trends in performance marketing for 2009, we would have to place the evolution and proliferation of the flogs high on the list. Several things enabled them to perform as successfully as... More...

An Act of Desperation?
Tough times call for desperate measures. No. I think the saying goes "Desperate times call for desperate measures." It's an interesting saying, and we always tend to think of it literally in that order, that the situation causes... More...

Women Leaning More on Social Networking Sites
Women are utilizing social networking sites more often these days for various purposes, including those related to interacting with brands online. More...

The State of Mobile Usage in the U.S.
Late last month, Nielsen revealed the findings of its Nielsen Convergence Audit and found that more households are doing away with landlines in favor of going cellular-only. More...

Facebook, Google Popular in 2009, Online Video, Mobile Ads Will Rise in 2010
Among all of the 2009 lists out there, Experian Hitwise released their version of the top 10 most-searched terms of the year and the results were far from surprising. More...

$27 Billion Spent During 2009 Holiday Season
According to recent figures released by comScore, the 2009 holiday season saw more money spent on e-commerce purchases compared with 2008 totals. More...

Semi-Bold 2010 Media Predictions and Observations
2009 was a fascinating year for online media, and 2010 proves to be even more interesting. Much as already been said about 2009, so I’ll pick up from here and give you my super duper prognostications and predictions for 2010 More...

The Year That Was - Facebook
There is an old joke which many of the newer marketers, due to their age, might not even get, one almost sure to become obsolete by the time they have kids. It goes, "What is black and white and red all over? A newspaper... More...

When They Come for You
Surf the net for just a bit, and you will have a hard time not seeing miss stay-at-home mom, Mary Steadman and "How A Stay at Home Mom Makes $5700/month on... More...

What Will Become of The Flog?
Hard to believe, but 2010 will arrive in less than a month. Given that most people check out right before Christmas, we have perhaps 15 business remaining. And, since the holiday season often involves physical gifts which... More...

The Recipe for A Worse Internet
I think we have all heard the expression the customer is always right. It's a saying that somehow the majority of American consumers have internalized, acting with a growing sense of... More...

Use with Caution
To flog or not to flog. That is the question, or so it seems the question for many in the performance marketing space. Already, we've seen a marked decrease in the number of... More...

Part 2 - The Fallout
When your publication reaches close to a million readers that is some serious leverage, and Michael Arrington leverages his power to the fullest. Techcrunch is not a traditional publication... More...

One in Five Internet Users are Updating their Statuses on Twitter or Elsewhere
Pew Internet & American Life Project’s recent “Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009” report reveals that about 19 percent of adult Internet users use Twitter or another status update service, reflecting a huge surge from previous surveys. More...

Get Ripped... Off
When we look back on the history of the world of flogs and flogvertising, we probably won't know which straw broke the camels back. The straws in this case are mainstream news articles but more so legal ... More...

Tweet This: The Odeo Rodeo
We came across an article in AdAge this week that interviews Dom Sagolla, a former quality control engineer that worked on Twitter. His story is a pretty interesting one, but it's the kind when reading that you really want to hear... More...

YouTube Top Online Video Brand, Hulu Second in September
According to the latest Nielsen report on online video, the total number of streams in September increased by nearly 25 percent year-over-year while YouTube beat out Hulu as the top online video brand. More...

Size Doesn’t Matter as Much as Creativity for Rich Media Ads
According to Eyeblaster's recent "Global Benchmark Report 2009," rich media ads benefit from things other than size, though banner ads benefit from increased sizes because of increased visibility. More...

Google Top Property in September, Entertainment, Education Sites See Fall Boost
According to the latest data released by comScore's Media Metrix service, September showed a visible shift from the summertime to the fall season online. More...

Free Diapers and the Future of Incentivized Marketing
It turns out that you can learn a lot from an offer for free diapers. For us, that journey into free diaper land helped cement a belief surrounding the email submit space - that not only is there continued consolidation but that the... More...

Fake Blogs - What's At Risk
In chatting with a friend in the industry, they remarked how it seemed to them that the FTC operated two years in arrears. They looked at this week's earlier announcement regarding the updating of the FTC’s Guides Concerning... More...

Why Are You Hiding?
You have probably at some point in time heard the well known saying from ancient military strategist Sun-tzu keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It is one of those at first counterintuitive sayings that makes little... More...

Swimming With The Sharks - Part 1
When talking about the fake blog landscape we almost always focus on those driving the traffic, the publisher/affiliate. It's the most visible and controversial piece of the equation, but without an actual product to promote... More...

The Land of Opportunity
Regardless of what happens in the ongoing drama that is fakevertising, we will forever remember this past year as one of the most unique and perhaps one of the most defining we've seen. In a classic example of performance... More...

The Value of Display Ads is Found Without Clicks
Click-through rates, shmick-through rates - who cares about click-through rates? More...

Green, Auto Sites See Big Growth in July
According to the latest figures released by comScore, Green and Auto Manufacturer Web sites saw big gains in July, thanks to the government’s “Cash for Clunkers” program. More...

Oprah and Oz on the Offensive
There might never be a good way to learn about bad news, but some ways are definitely worse than others, e.g. when it involves you. That would certainly be the case with the biggest news to ripple through the... More...

One Size Does Not Fit All
Walking down the street today, I couldn't help but notice a sign from the Gap advertising buy one get one free on shirts, tee-shirts, and sweaters. It's a pretty compelling proposition to have you stop in the store, and the economic... More...

Yahoo Flogger Slap
Walking around Affiliate Summit East last week, we still couldn't shake the two world's colliding feel we get every time we attend the show. In one corner sits the real affiliate world, the ecosystem supporting small to medium retailers... More...

Yay,They Did It. Next.
In the time that Microsoft and Yahoo have discussed working together, first through an outright acquisition by Microsoft and then in various piecemeal deals since, the Internet world as we know it has dramatically changed. A full... More...

One to Many
When we write about the economics of the flog and other forms of fakevertising sites currently dominating the display space, at the core what we are really talking about are the mechanics of successful run of network, remnant... More...

The Soaker Campaign
In a story that might begin, "A long time ago, back in the third quarter of 2008, a site that looked like a blog appeared." Since then, the fake blog and its relatives - the fake news site and fake celebrity/gossip site - have taken over... More...

Tweet This URL
The Guardian, one of the principle publications in the UK, published a brief but interesting article on Twitter, inspired by the author's attending a talk given by Even Weaver, one of the micro-publishing site's lead engineers. Looking over... More...

I Spent Millions And All I Got Was This Lousy Logo
There are certain things in life that move us. They drive us to act and express our opinions passionately. Some of those things make sense and can align for social good. Those who want to give their time helping the less fortunate... More...

Our Customers
The people in our space comprise a hodgepodge of personalities with some major clusters around certain characteristics. One of those clusters still confuses me, but it seems to have something to do with the non-traditional... More...

Bing. You Are Now Free to Move about The Internet
As one of the few people in the internet world who still watches a lot of TV, last night I saw my first commercial for Bing. Today, as an experiment I decided to ask a few different people what they thought of Bing. A former Microsoft... More...

Facebook Slap
Users of Blackberry’s with the latest version of the Facebook application installed discovered something new when using their phone - the merging of their phone contacts with their friends on Facebook. As a results, when they... More...

Don't Call It a Flog
If you talk to some of the old school mobile subscription services marketers, and by old school, we really mean those who ran campaigns before the Facebook Flyers program, they would let you in... More...

World of Free - In Situ
In Part 1 of the World of Free, the emphasis was on doing what we like to do because we're not as smart as you. Perhaps it's because we never went to business school and are still trying to make up for it. Regardless, we find it... More...

Will We Survive
When thinking about the performance marketing sector, it amazes us that we have only used Charles Dickens’ famous line “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times,” only once before in the past five years. For at no point in our... More...

Land of Opportunity
When we talk about arbitrage, we so often think about it from a single point of view - the classic arbitrage scenario involving a single person spending money on one of the major self-service interfaces be it Google... More...

Arb Checklist
When an outside person hears about the arbitrage industry, specifically the cash flow businesses that result from what seems like such simple activities, they invariably start turning over in their minds scenarios by... More...

Bride of Flogenstein
Some what out of necessity, the fake blogs have started to grow-up. While still a confusing mess, two types of players seem strongest - those attempting to buy on slightly more premium inventory, i.e. non-self service... More...

History Repeated? - Part 2
In the world of performance-based advertising, the price per action correlates directly with quality. The higher the quality, the greater the payout. Let's look at two examples, one from the lead generation world and one from the... More...

Private Network
At a high level, many in those in the performance marketing space fall under the general umbrella that is affiliate marketing, i.e. acting as commissioned agents promoting a third-party product. But, are those in... More...

Hulu, Tax Sites Gain in February
According to the most recent figures released by comScore Media Metrix, Hulu saw its online U.S. audience surge in February, thanks to its well-received Super Bowl advertisement. Meanwhile, tax season lifted traffic to tax-related Web sites. More...

Looking at The Bright Side
March, a month that New Yorkers say enters like a lion and leaves like a lamb, entered like a full den of lions who hadn't eaten in days. Judging by the recent stock market rally, where had you bet on the index as a... More...

Margin vs Market Share
Often topics in the business world fall out of favor once the next great mantra comes along, either replacing and/or refuting the last . One week it might be "Who Moved My Cheese?" the next "The Four Hour Work Week." Some... More...

The Content Conundrum
Every few years those attempting to predict the latest interactive trend will come out and make a statement like “Content is king.” In Google’s case that statement might read “Context is king,” and for the fake blogs, it would be... More...

Yahoo Mail: One-Third of Yahoo’s Traffic
Yahoo! remains the second-most popular Web property in the U.S., according to January figures from comScore. According to recent figures released by Hitwise, the company has its e-mail product to thank for more than a third of its traffic. More...

Switzerland, US Lose Active Internet Home Users in December
Nielsen Online recently released its monthly report of worldwide active Internet home users in December and revealed that only Switzerland and the U.S. saw their Internet user count shrink. More...

Notes - Ad Economy
Nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news. Shocking news, yes, but bad news no. While it might be true, bad news causes anyone to come away feeling hopeless. They feel lost in a system and problem greater than... More...

Subject Lines can make or break you
The first thing your customer sees of your mailing is the subject line. It is what entices them to open or simply delete the email. The subject line can make or break the offer. More...

The Battle Over Display
A reader commenting on our, or at least my, non-stop obsession with flogs, quipped that we should change the name from DMConfidential to FlogConfidential. It's true. Q1 2009 has ushered in the year of the flogs... More...

New Year. New Mailer's. Same Mistakes
In any business venture, you should begin with the end in mind. For email marketers, the end goal is to execute a successful email campaign. More...

Retailers Flock to E-Mail
According to recent figures released by e-mail marketing strategy and creative services firm Smith-Harmon Inc., retailers ramped up their promotional e-mail campaigns in December, building on a trend that began in September. More...

Online Advertising in January
Nielsen Online recently unveiled a quick peek at the online advertising landscape in January. The business-to-business, software and Web media industries experienced big boosts in ad impressions, while some familiar companies topped the sponsored link impressions list. More...

Top Gaining Sites in January Reflect Tax Season
comScore's latest portrait of the top Web in January showed that tax and career sites experienced big boosts in traffic, while Facebook finished the month in the elite top 10 list of the biggest Web properties for the first time. More...

US Retail E-Commerce Sales Dismal in Fourth Quarter
According to comScore’s latest retail e-commerce sales figures for the U.S., the fourth quarter of 2008 was the first time the company observed a negative year-over-year percent change. More...

Spain Sees Surge in Number of Internet Users
The latest figures released by Nielsen Online show that the number of Spain’s active Internet home users in November saw a month-to-month jump of 6.37 percent in November. More...

The Flogging of the Flog
While we doubt that Merriam-Webster will update their definition for "flog" to encompass the fake blogs, it turns out that the current meaning of the word applies much more appropriately than expected, and that is "to force... More...

Resurgence of Facebook Applications
It could easily be argued that Facebook’s redesign more than six months ago basically threw a blanket over the social network’s applications. While many of the irritating aspects of applications were muted thanks to the new interface, it came at a big cost to Facebook application developers. More...

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
A recent study released by KPMG LLP, an audit, tax and advisory company, in conjunction with the venture capital new media organization AlwaysOn, highlighted the growing importance of the mobile realm. More...

52 Percent of US Internet Users will be Social Network Users by 2013
Figures released on Monday by eMarketer showed that an estimated 79.5 million Internet users in the U.S. used social networks in 2008, about 41 percent of the entire Internet population in the country. More...

Incentive Promotion: Crossing the Chasm - Part 2
In the past we've written, probably more than any other publication, about various forms of incentivized marketing. It's an amazing business that has had more comebacks than John Elway, and despite the lickin', keeps on... More...

The Affiliate Marketing Stimulus Package
A few days ago The Wall Street Journal ran an article by well known writer and author Chris Anderson titled, "The Economics of Giving It Away," which tries to tackle (in non-book form) one of the more difficult challenges... More...

The Future of the Flog
When we came back from Affiliate Summit, we found ourselves fixated on one of the takeaways that we wrote about upon our return - this notion that part of performance marketing has entered into a race to the bottom. More...

‘MySpace’ is Top Search Term in December
Hitwise recently released its lists of the top 10 industry search terms based on U.S. Internet usage during the four weeks ending Dec. 27, 2008, and showed that “myspace” was the top overall search term. More...

LinkedIn Users Don’t Flirt
A recent study released by Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 35 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 and older used online social networks in 2008, compared to 65 percent of teenagers 12- to 17-years old. More...

Lessons Learned From The Frontlines of eCommerce
It is hard to escape the platitudes and suggestions that accompany a New Year. The tendency is to look back and try and learn from what has occurred in the past and apply that wisdom towards creating a more fulfilling future. More...

Advantages of Building a LIST
Email marketing: it has quickly become one of the hottest new industries of the past decade, with more people than ever before seeing substantial returns on this investment. More...

F*ed Company Part 2
One of the trends not necessarily evident from attending Affiliate Summit has already started, and will continue in the days and months ahead. This trend reminds us of something we listened to a little more than a year ago at a very... More...

Best Ad Ever?
Those that saw our "You Give Leads A Bad Name" presentation will know that one of our favorite topics to cover outside of (the lengthier and more time consuming) strategy / analysis pieces are more observational in nature. More...

Google Jumps The Shark
In writing our review of the current state and future potential of Facebook's self-service advertising platform, we found ourselves incredibly bullish on its potential, not the least of which stems from all of the various levers... More...

Performance Marketing in 2009
Every few weeks, especially in the bout of more poor general economic news, an article comes out with even more dire news for the online advertising ecosystem, always taking the same shape. So and so has... More...

The Lure of Transparency
Two weeks ago, we covered one of the more fundamental topics in the world of performance marketing - transparency. We didn't call it transparency then; instead, the article described one of the unsung heroes... More...

Affiliate Marketing 101 - An Introduction to Transparency
Not too long ago, we wrote about how the difference between coming across as smart and coming across as intelligence impaired often has less to do with one's actual intelligence and much more to do with their... More...

Mergers and Hackquisitions
The results of last week's election will keep people talking for years to come. While thousands following the results from ad:tech and the millions country-wide found themselves glued to the television well into the night... More...

Ad(network):tech
In compiling our annual Unofficial ad:tech Party List, the process started us thinking about the show in general, namely the nature of the companies, interestingly enough at least from our perspective, the barrier... More...

The Secrets to Success in Affiliate Marketing
So, here we are in the middle of economic turmoil. Every medium you watch, listen to or read is full of the economy’s downward spiral. More...

Free Economy
Earlier this month, our writing travels brought us to Denver, home to Liberty Media, a holding company that not many in the direct response space will know by name, but whose principal businesses and assets it... More...

Firefox Preps Fennec
Mozilla’s successful Firefox Web browser is making significant headway into the mobile arena with its impending release of a very alpha version of its "Fennec" browser More...

Escapism and Todays Economy
Now is about the time of year when we are all making sure we have those holiday campaigns lined up. You know the ones -- the Halloween costumes, turkey fryers and stocking stuffers that some ad reps dread landing because they know they will only make a few quick bucks. More...

Offers that Make the Web Go 'Round
In thinking about our topic from last week, the Ringtone Ecosystem, it brings up an interesting point with the ringtone space, that mobile subscription marketing isn't mobile marketing. The multibillion dollar... More...

Ringtone Ecosystem - Part 1
With the recent performance of the stock market - unprecedented for those under the age of 80 - it's easy to become consumed and forget that a broader world exists. In a way, it's a strange, almost self-fulfilling cycle. You hear bad... More...

How Will Online Advertising Fare - Part 2, Why
The great New York Yankees player Yogi Berra is as well known for his sayings as his playing. One of his more oft-quoted phrases includes, "It's like deja vu all over again." Granted this comes from a person who when asked... More...

Google Chrome Was More Popular Back Then
Now that much of the dust has settled, it seems that Google Chrome’s initial charm has worn off a bit. More...

TV Looks Shaky
According to the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), total spot television advertising revenue to drop off between 2-5% in 2009 from 2008 figures. Online ad revenues for local TV stations, however, are expected to increase 25-35%. More...

Economic Ebola - Part 2
The Bear Stearns collapse took place in mid-March of this year, but as touched upon in Part 1, signs of its perilous fall, from almost $30 per share to its purchase price two days later at $2 per share, began clearly in... More...

Internet Advertising MBA
When you just start out in any space, it is easy to feel out of place, and when you've worked in a space for a long time, it's just as easy to spot those who haven't. If you are the newbie, you might understand the... More...

Google Isn't As Smart As We Think
It's not often you listen to a panel that contains a CEO of a large B2B lead generation platform play and a founder of a company whose entire business still comes from incentive marketing. Throw in a travel... More...

Battle of the Chromes
If the news came out that a portion of California broke off into the water, it might take some time to comprehend the effects of what transpired, but it wouldn't come as a surprise. Similarly, below Yellowstone sits a super-volcano, that when... More...

Bridging Interests
In almost every instance, changes to Google's quality score mean the company makes more money. As we discuss in our piece on the topic, this holds true in the most recent change from static to real-time quality... More...

$116 Heard Round The World
If your company gets big enough and makes enough money, you can count on a lawsuit. Some suits make sense. If you make money by violating the law, then you could argue that a suit makes sense to insure... More...

The Return of Click Arbitrage... Sort of
Two weeks ago we did a series about the two face of quality score, with the focus being two of the seemingly motivating factors behind Google's now infamous metric. The first is strategic and long term - building a... More...

CPAEmpire to rebrand Affiliate.com
If you had visited affiliate.com in the past couple of months, you would have noticed a standard domain parking page, in this case powered by Smartname.com. More...

Quiz Show The Return - Part 1
Almost two years ago, an exploration of coffee led us to a unique lead generation site, although at the time, its revenue model and link to the lead generation world looked much less clear than they do today. The site... More...

Internet Censorship in China Still On; Solutions Available
Last week, the International Olympic Committee caved into China's backtracking on the issue of online censorship for foreign journalists during the summer Olympics. More...

In the Time of a Recession, is Branding Really Enough?
In a downward market, does a positive correlation between brand awareness and customer acquisition still exist? More...

What to Look for in a List Management Company
Attention all Advertisers! By advertisers, I mean anyone who owns an internet property that sells a product, service, or creates leads online. How many of you have multiple revenue streams other than what sales are made through your web site? More...

Where does my company go from here? Part 1 of 4
Now that you have created your landing page and set up the legal registration of your new affiliate marketing company, you are ready for the money to come flooding in. More...

Jump Pages or Value Add?
As we wrote last week, love it or hate it, Google's quality score has become a fact of life for those wanting to spend money on Google. Regarding the motivations behind the quality score, we said then, "Cynics... More...

And The Results Are In
A few weeks ago we talked about how the beginning of July marks one of several important dates for those who track financial performance, and this past week, the public companies in our sector report their second quarter... More...

Is there room for my company in the affiliate-marketing world?
The rapid growth of the Internet and online services worldwide is only the beginning of a long-lived trend towards an economy built on the infrastructure of the Internet. More...

TV Still Going Strong
While online and mobile video consumption is on the rise, traditional TV viewing seems to be unhindered by their counterparts’ growth, according to Nielsen Online More...

Hulu Cracks Top Online Video Properties List
Google (thanks mostly to YouTube) and, to a lesser extent, Fox Interactive Media have been the two dominant forces in online video in recent memory More...

France, Italy, Australia See Strong Internet User Growth
According to Nielsen Online, France, Italy, and Australia experienced strong growth in the number of Internet users within their respective borders, while Switzerland saw a slight drop off More...

Offers to the Gallon
While outrageously high from a historic perspective and tragic in many cases, foreclosures impact a relatively small percentage of the total population. High gas prices on the other hand, you can't escape. Even if... More...

What Does A Possible Microsoft-Yahoo Merger Mean To You, Search Engine Marketer?
Last year Google generated $18.12 billion in revenue while its chief pay per click rival Yahoo added $7.12 billion in revenue to its balance sheet. More...

Opt-In E-Mail Industry Now Closed to Outsiders?
Many e-mail marketers will remember a time not so long ago, when one could do very minimal work and reap huge rewards More...

Firefox Users Are More Secure Than IE Users
Firefox users are safer than Internet Explorer users, according to a report released by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Google, and IBM More...

Obama vs. McCain: Online
Hitwise recently released a report listing the different search terms that lead users to each of the presumptive presidential candidates. More...

Top Friends is Back, Super Wall Now Feeling the Pain
Well, Slide’s Top Friends application is back up on Facebook, but it seems that another app is now feeling similar pressure from the social network. More...

WSJ.com Sees Good and Bad News
While newspapers are suffering in the paper world, there are a few success stories online. The Wall Street Journal might be the latest. More...

Refinance Dot Com Style
Exclude if you will the whole subprime mortgage mess and think back to a more sane, structured, and controlled lending environment, one without the exuberance and lack of standards. It might be hard, especially if you... More...

Facebook, Slide Fail
Last week, it was revealed that Facebook had encountered yet another pothole in their road to an enormous valuation. This time, Slide, Inc., the top Facebook application company in terms of installs and active users, and a computer technician in Vancouver had their hands in the matter. More...

Firefox 3 Has a Huge Week
Mozilla promoted June 17th as “Download Day 2008,” asking supporters to help them set a new Guinness World Record by downloading its new Firefox 3.0 Web browser. More...

MySpace Still Ahead of Facebook?
While Facebook seems to get more buzzworthy coverage, MySpace has managed to maintain its strong leadership position in the social networking realm. More...

The New Arms Race
Earlier this month, Apple's iPhone, one of the most anticipated launches in recent memory, turned a year old. Watching the lines form and the micro-economies that formed around early procurement, looked... More...

Win, Lose, or Draw?
One of the longer running and largest legal proceedings came to a conclusion. Were you to have read the adjective laden accounts of the outcome in the popular and trade press, you would think the case involved... More...

Winners & Losers
In the fashion world, things change in a relatively predictable cycle, with designers handing out their new style mandates that world of print and other trend noting mediums translate into the season's do's and dont's... More...

Search Versus Store
A couple of weeks ago, after much speculation, news came out that Google had launched its Google Health product, which as the site claims, "puts you in charge of your health information." Translated, that last part... More...

Making of a Market - Part 2
In Part 1 of "Making of a Market," we cover the historical setting that paved the way for some of the more significant, or at least pervasive, online advertising segments, including mortgage and incentive marketing... More...

Old is New Again
Every so often, new information changes our perspective. Every so often, some new bit of data comes along that causes us to take pause and reconcile what we thought we knew about an area with what we now... More...

Not So Long Tail
August of this year will mark the four year anniversary of Google going public, in many ways the tipping point for Internet advertising as we know it today. Four years ago, what existed? Internet life focused around... More...

The Path to Profit
The ad network is dead. Long live the ad network. Depending on whom you ask, things are doing very well or not quite well enough. The same of course holds true for Internet advertising as a whole. On the one hand... More...

Get Hired
In this week's other article on the job market, "You're Fired," we talk about the potential that the job losses that have hit other industries could hit ours, despite the often rosy picture painted by many of the technology... More...

Risky Business
Earlier this week, prior to ad:tech, we had the chance to join another gathering of those in the industry. We traveled to San Diego to participate in Experian Americas Sales Summit, joining a panel of those much... More...

Can Display Catch Search?
While the not quite drama of Microsoft-Yahoo continues, the ensuing attention paid to the former's potential acquisition of the latter has at least started to focus the broader dialog on future possibilities of Internet... More...

Run (out) Of Network
The last couple of years, the past 16 months certainly, has treated those in the ad network space well, especially those with a technology layer, that, whether it lived up to its promise or not, helped increase the multiple... More...

Recession Survival Guide
Depending on whom you ask, the United States economy has already entered a recession or sits on the precipice of one, with even the most bullish not willing to say no such recession will occur. Our stock... More...

Power to The People - Part 2
Despite it being the largest corporate employer and having no shortage of detractors, Wal-Mart doesn't come close to qualifying as a monopoly. Granted, in many areas, especially rural, their presence has greatly reduced the number... More...

Ringtones In The News Again
If a government agency could find itself on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, Florida's Attorney General's CyberFraud Task Force would have a strong case for inclusion. As you might recall, upon... More...

The Mystery of Display
Last week, almost two weeks after word spread that Microsoft had an interest in Yahoo, MarketWatch.com published an article titled, "Microsoft's play for display," with the subtitle, "Buying Yahoo a major bet... More...

Made for Yahoo Feed Sites Under Scrutiny
In addition to the writers strike ending, the flurry of activity surrounding the potential acquisition of Yahoo also pushed another, and in this case much more relevant to our industry than the writers strike, piece of news to the... More...

No School For You
Last month when we attended the Inman Real Estate Connect Show, a show packed with hundreds of real estate agents listening to leaders in the field and economists delivering the unfortunate truth that yes the housing... More...

Much Ado About Yahoo - Part 2
Just imagine a year from now, looking back on what was written about Yahoo-Microsoft. Imagine in three years. Will it become the next AOL-TimeWarner or perhaps the next Daimler-Chrysler? In Part 1 of our week 1... More...

The Domain Shakeout
For an industry that generates billions annually and operates much today as it did ten years ago with many of the same people as then, outside of the occasional article, little coverage of the domain name landscape... More...

Is it 2009 Yet?
When talking about the stock market, a friend of mine recently joked, "So I take it, you too are now a long-term investor?" He joked, because as two non-savvy investors, we have lost so much since the start of this year that... More...

Online Video Killed the TV Star
I like TV, more than someone in the Internet age probably should, and if I admit to how little video content I consume while sitting in front of an Internet enabled device, well, we won't go there. Let's just say there are... More...

Google Hates You
The Falling Knife might not have had the most uplifting news about the year(s) ahead, so we will apologize in advance that this article too doesn't offer much more hope. Name another company, though, that even if... More...

Online Media Mergers & Acquisitions Activity in 2007
In 2007, there were 615 merger, acquisition and capital raise transactions in the online sector of media. More...

Will 2008 Be Great?
As we wrote out our predictions for the upcoming year, one question kept creeping into our mind - "Will this year be a good one?" Saying this company might go public or this vertical might not tells the affect but not... More...

Ringtones Survival Guide
In this week's Trends report, we introduce the notion of affiliate accountability, not that affiliates have thus far in their existence acted without accountability, but for reasons both valid and not... More...

When Writers Strike
If asked to name a union, I imagine many would gravitate towards one of the larger, albeit waining ones, the United Auto Workers. Name the last time that they went on strike, and unless you actively follow or have some... More...

Facebook: Another Privacy Issue
It was a little over a year ago when Facebook faced loud criticism for the unveiling of its News Feed feature. After a public apology and a few tweaks, the News Feed remains and is a convenient feature for many users. More...

YouTube Still Online Video King
According to the most recent comScore Video Metrix report for September 2007, Google Sites (which includes YouTube) remains the king of the online video hill, both in terms of the number of videos viewed and in terms of unique video viewers. More...

Cyber Monday Was Best Yet
Cyber Monday, the moniker fondly given to the Monday after Thanksgiving, saw its best year yet in 2007. Online shoppers in the U.S. spent $733 million on Cyber Monday, according to comScore. This marks a 21% increase from last years figure. More...

Credit Crunch Fears Reappear
Travel back to Thursday, July 19, 2007. The Dow broke 14,000 for the first time ever, ending the day at 14000.71. On Friday, it retreated 150 points, though, and closed just above 13850. Days later on Monday, July 23... More...

Do Not Track - Not For Me
I finished my undergraduate degree as the Internet boom started to hit its stride, but after several entrepreneurs had already started and sold companies for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. When I started... More...

Sales-sourcing: A Tale of Two
Not having studied finance nor growing up with aspirations of working on Wall Street, and despite a significant number of years in the online space, not to mention more than one article on the topic, but the online ad... More...

The Real Ringtone Shakeup
About a month ago, we wrote about imminent changes in the ringtone landscape, ones that had the potential to materially impact a large percentage of those driving signups to ringtone providers. Changes can... More...

A Local Dilemma - Part 2
If you read Part 1, you will have learned of a great gym, but more importantly, of a challenge that it and many local businesses face, especially service based ones where foot traffic alone won't make the... More...

What's New in Incentivized Marketing
For many reasons - another record year expected in online advertising, Google first hitting $600 per share, Bidu passing $300, multiple multi-billion dollar acquisitions, record-levels of investment, a blog being valued at $100 million... More...

Google, Microsoft Popular in U.K., Facebook Growing
In August, Google attracted 28.3 million unique visitors in the U.K., or about 88.8% of the U.K.’s total online audience (ages 15 and older), according to recent comScore numbers. More...

Online Ad Spend Passes $5 Billion in Q2
The most recent data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that online ad spending stormed ahead to reach $5.1 billion for the second quarter alone, a 25.4% increase from the same quarter last year. More...

King of Traffix
If you attend Affiliate Summit, you should have come across a company called Hot Rocket Marketing and their affiliate network RocketProfit.com. Then again, given their low key demeanor, you might not have. At Affiliate... More...

Google CPA Optimizer
Google has entered an arena which comes as no surprise but still a slight shock. The company has made billions of dollars off click based advertising, literally billions. In fact, they make more than a billion dollars... More...

Push vs. Pull in Lead Generation
If you follow the public companies within the Internet advertising space, you should have some familiarity with the rise and fall of Valueclick. The stock went from around $13 in the middle of 2006, doubled within five... More...

Blue is the new Black
Pretend for a second that you just got back from vacation and didn't happen to see the flurry of blog posts on Tuesday afternoon and articles yesterday. That way the answer to this question won't come quite as easily. Even if you do... More...

Captured: The Next Incentive Promotion
Every so often we like to highlight certain aspects of direct marketing. We've done this with various forms of lead generation, pure CPC arbitrage, and most recently with the incentive promotion space. The focus today... More...

Making Sense of the Mortgage Market Mess, Week Two - Part 1
Almost four weeks ago today, on July 19, 2007, the Dow Jones closed at an all time high or 14,000. In the four weeks since, the Dow has managed to give now more than 1000 points, closing below 13,000 for the first time... More...

Making Sense of the Mortgage Market Mess
For the past four, perhaps five years, the mortgage vertical has generated more leads and ultimately more revenue than any other. That could change this year as the mortgage market undergoes its biggest correction... More...

Valueclick and the Future of Incentive Promotion
A little more than two months ago, Valueclick announced an inquiry into their lead generation practices by the FTC. As required by securities law, the company filed a Form 8-K acknowledging the receipt of a letter of... More...

Google and CPA
News surfaced a little more than a year ago about the beginnings of a Google CPA network. In June of 2006, word started to break about a product called Content Referral where, for the first time, advertisers could... More...

PPC vs. Affiliate Arbitrage - Part 2
Perhaps not quite a soft spot, but we have long followed and had a strange affinity for various forms of arbitrage. It is, in many ways, a representation of life at large - the pursuit of easy money, the ultimate cat and mouse... More...

PPC vs. Affiliate Arbitrage - Part 1
Earlier this week, the ever acquisitive ValueClick announced that it added a new company to its interactive marketing mix. We hadn't read the release when asked what we thought Valueclick paid for the 4th ranked... More...

The State of Mobile Marketing
Our industry is an interesting one; it's a complex marketplace of intent, monetization, and relative performance. Those in the direct marketing space either have traffic, e.g. via their website or email list or they have the... More...

Master of Your Own Domain (Names)
Affiliate Summit registrants found something in their inboxes a few days ago that might have more than one looking quizzically at the message and perhaps even more hitting delete. It was easy to see why. The subject... More...

Lead Management
Not too long ago we wrote about one of my personal favorites, web based instant messaging company Meebo. I have used the product since I first read a story of how it caught on in an unlikely place, with our troops... More...

The Beginning of the End for Incentive Marketing
After ValueClick disclosed an inquiry into their lead generation practices by the FTC announcement stemming from the company's incentive marketing campaigns, it was only a matter of time before changes would start to make... More...

Breaking Down Paid Search, Part 1
Google has long seemed to have a love/hate relationship with the affiliate marketing company. That is to say, they seem to hate affiliates and love to make their lives difficult. Two weeks ago we... More...

Long-Term Fundamentals
When companies get purchased for hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars, it gets us fired up and hungry. Lucky, we operate in an industry where we can actually do something... More...

An Exit for Affiliate Networks?
Right Media, aQuantive, and 24/7 Real Media all had something in common besides the technology platforms for which they were ostensibly acquired. Each had an ad network component to their business. It's safe... More...

Five in Five
It began with a bang and finished with a boom. Five weeks, five companies, and more than $10 billion spent in the largest wave of consolidation in recent history, if not ever, in the Internet advertising space. And, for better or worse, it... More...

A Site You Can't Live Without
Some ideas take a while to grasp. Some make sense right away. Some might make sense but go nowhere. Others don't seem to make sense right away but end up clicking at some point later. Some ideas become financial successes... More...

True That
Imagine yourself three years ago looking for a market to explore. Yes, 2004, in a world before MySpace and Facebook, a time when New Century still bought leads. You had money, a solid leadership team, and a desire to enter into the... More...

Microsoft Getting Soft?
First Yahoo invests in Right Media. Next, Google buys Doubleclick. Then, Yahoo scoops up the remainder of Right Media. And now, Microsoft could buy 24/7 Real Media?? Before we even begin to fathom why they might do... More...

The Many Faces of Internet Advertising - An Ad:Tech SF Commentary
By now, you've spent one if not two days deep in meetings while trying to squeeze in some time to roam an exhibit hall the size of some commercial farms, a floor space that should have airport style carts to take you from row to row. During this time, you've met those you know, those you didn't know, and those you wish you didn't have to know. More...

Done Deal. In the Wake of GOOG DCLK.
Two weeks ago, when it seemed that Microsoft might actually acquire DoubleClick, we wrote, upon learning of Google's interest in the billion dollar ad serving company, that DoubleClick would go to Google. A press release by... More...

The Race to Buy DoubleClick
This past week, the Internet's version of an arms race launched. It started exactly a week ago with articles similar to that published in MediaPost stating, "Microsoft/DoubleClick Deal Seems Likely." Four days later, the likely deal... More...

The Current State of Incentive Marketing...Sort of
We at the Confidential have covered the incentive marketing space for almost three years. A lot has changed during that time. Had you taken a poll in 2004 asking those in the interactive space if they thought incentive... More...

Google Drops the C-bomb
My heart almost stopped when I saw the subject of the Inside AdWords email sent, "[Inside AdWords] Pay-per-action beta test." That almost reaction almost doesn't make sense though. We work in the CPA space. We spend countless... More...

A Sub-prime Primer - Part 2
Mortgage banking as a whole has played a significant role in the Internet advertising landscape. It provided the catalyst and platform for LowerMyBills' $380 million purchase and NexTag's estimated $90 million... More...

Two Ways to Think about Ad Networks
The sale of Strategic Data Corp to Fox Interactive got us thinking. In the ad network world, there exist very few companies such as Strategic Data Corp. Publishers like Fox, who focus on content and not technology make... More...

One Edu Company's Big Day
Those who follow online lead generation, especially those who follow and /or operate in the online education lead generation space quickly circulated the news surrounding Vantage Media. Had you not known of Vantage Media, you... More...

Here We Go Again - Quality Score Update
Oy. The body of the email that I received yesterday had written in it just that one word, a sign of exasperation, almost frustration, if not resignation. What could have caused such a response? A quick look at the forwarded message... More...

Fair Weathered Pixel Practices
If it didn’t make me sound both old and/or worse behind the times, I would have begun this piece with “Back in my day.” But, really, back when my job involved, for lack of a better word, squeezing out the highest value per user... More...

Birth of Web 3.0
Hard to believe, but more than four years has passed since eBay bought PayPal. In those four years, those at PayPal, and specifically, those who decided to leave PayPal have kept busy. In the Long Island of the West, Silicon... More...

Birth of a Marketplace
To balance out this week’s Digital Thoughts, where we look at the incredibly non-direct marketing world of MySpace and YouTube, in this week’s Trends Report, we focus closer to our roots by looking at a company that has come a... More...

The Next Silicon Valley - Part 2
China has changed the face of manufacturing worldwide, and if Dr. Leonard Liu, one of the best CEO’s according to Japan’s Joichi Ito and leader of several multi-billion dollar companies has his way, China will change the face of... More...

The Next Silicon Valley - Part 1
Close your eyes for a second and think about what you will be doing at the age of 65. If you are Dr. Leonard Liu whose career included helping create and implement SQL, serving as a C-level executive at more than one multi-billion... More...

Year of New Lead Generation Verticals
When those of us in the online advertising world think of lead generation, we often think of the volume leaders - mortgage and education. It's hard not to, as they, for the most part, dominate our advertising consciousness, especially... More...

Beauty of Arbitrage
Those in the direct response space see the world differently. They get paid when something happens and only when something happens. Those in the direct response space come in many shapes and sizes. They include... More...

Online Video: Show me the money
In what feels like a long time ago but was only in October, we wrote that many advertisers have already jumped on the video bandwagon but that not all of the dollars available have yet to find a home. Even people who don’t necessarily... More...

Captured: Inventory Extension
Sites such as YouTube illustrate the challenges of ad matching well. Some incredible technologies have been developed that help tremendously, behavioral targeting being one. I have always liked what behavioral targeting... More...

Evolution of the Quality Score - Part 2
With the Quality Score, Google has found a masterful way to make more money from its advertisers in the name of more relevant ads. As an advertiser, it comes down to one thing, the higher the Quality Score, the lower the actual... More...

Evolution of the Quality Score - Part 1
A little more than a week ago, beginning November 6, 2006, Google unveiled its fourth Quality Score announcement. If you don’t advertise on Google, this might not mean to much to you, but if you do advertise on Google, especially if... More...

Something Video This Way Comes
It’s hard to explain or put a finger on it, but we are beginning to witness something big. When it comes to just what the next big thing will be, much of the discussion to date has focused on online video. And, chances are that’s... More...

The Un-network Ad Networks
Last week’s Trends Report “Thinking outside the Banner” focused on the new type of ad network, one whose inventory wasn’t limited to IAB formats. And, in a break with traditional web site based networks, many of these companies... More...

Thinking Outside the Banner
The ad network space has not seen too much activity with respect to investment / acquisition activity. Advertising.com sold several years ago; Fastclick went public then sold to Valueclick. Turn.com raised a decent amount... More...

Just Don’t Call It GooTube
How would you spend one-point-six-five billion dollars? That’s the question the owners of YouTube now face after their most impressive sale to the mighty Google. It was less than one week ago, in the wee hours of the 6th, that... More...

Pay Per Call and Local Services
Earlier this week, MediaPost ran an article written by Gord Hotchkiss, president of search engine marketing company Enquiro, on the pay per call market that focused on a pay per call advertiser Radiator.com and pay per call... More...

Yahoo and the Internet, Part 1
If this were baseball, Yahoo would not be going to the playoffs. And, if the adage, “three strikes and your out” applied, then the current number two in search would have even bigger worries. At the beginning of last week, Yahoo... More...

Video Primer Part 1
It almost embarrasses me to join the fray of people covering the world of online video. Admittedly, though, the world of online video has begun to take shape, and quite a bit has unfolded within the past week. This week’s news... More...

Have We Met?
Lead generation companies represent some of the most prolific advertisers on both search and display. Despite their seemingly run of network approach and often incomprehensible reach, those at the top actually employ... More...

Quiet Period
In “Quality over Quantity” we focus on the general trend in lead generation of both the buyers of leads and the suppliers of leads focusing on producing higher quality, more efficient leads as opposed to trying to simply maximize the... More...

Part 1 - Domain Name Landscape
There is a lot of land in the world. Virtually all of it is owned, be it by an individual, a corporation, or a government; a fair amount is developed, and the value of the land ranges dramatically based on its location. Some owners of... More...

Reputation
One of the more interesting consequences of today’s information society is not just the abundance of information, but the potential permanence of it. I remember companies advertising for browser cleaning products. Before today’s registry cleaning... More...

eBay, AOL, Amazon, Yahoo, and MSN
Chances are most of us use eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo, but they seem to have become non-players at the moment with respect to internet advertising. More...

The Era Of Intent
Business Week ran a cover story last week for their August 14th issue that covered one of the most successful sites, about which many either know so much or so little, Digg.com. Ask almost any Internet technology person, walk... More...

A Tale of Two Duplicities
This had been a notable week in terms of the deluge of news articles regarding Internet fraud. Perhaps the summer heat and the forecast of temperatures rising into the 100s have an overall noxious effect on people’s... More...

Information Security Bigger Threat than Terrorism
A study titled “Secure the Trust of Your Brand: Assessing the Security Mindset of Consumers” was conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Opinion Research. The results were released on Monday, and reveal... More...

State of Remnant Advertising
Two weeks ago, we looked at the impact that sites like MySpace have and will continue to have on those in the direct response / lead generation space. Historically, lead generation advertisers have found a way to succeed on... More...

Mortgage Lead Gen’s “Strive for 5”
At the dealer where I take my car to be serviced, plain paper printouts adorn the walls reading, “We Strive for Five.” After asking, I learned that the service writers, that is, the one who handles your visit, receives more money if you give... More...

Quality Score Update - CPC to PPC Arbitrage Parade
In April, I wrote about a site that had jumped from zero traffic to an Alexa reported almost 15 million page views per day. The site peaked towards the end of June at more than 20 million page views and achieved a rank that More...

Mechanics of “The Tail” or Long Tail Economics
This week’s Digital Trends explores the phenomenon known as the Long Tail, a phrase and now book by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, first published as an article for the magazine he heads in October 2004. Part 1 of... More...

Exitcution: The “150/100” Challenge, Part 2
Exitcution is all about how a company handles grow. Exitcution deals with not just how companies handle growth but whether they will continue to grow. It’s part strategy and a big part execution. With respect to those in the Internet... More...

Google goes CPA
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to present, as part of a panel at DM Days, my thoughts on the changing search landscape. My piece focused on CPA search, a topic that fascinates me in no small part due to the arbitrage activity taking More...

VendareNetblue - Before they were one, Part 2
In Part 1 of this week’s Digital Trends we cover the history of Vendare, a company that went from tens of millions of dollars annually to breaking one-hundred million dollars four years later. The company grew through smart... More...

360Solutions - Hotbar + 180Solutions
In March of this year Claria, originator and pioneer of the modern adware landscape, made the intriguing announcement that they planned to exit the adware business. They weren’t giving up tracking user behavior and serving... More...

Edu-adventures: Education Lead Generation Landscape
Part One of this piece on the recent Eduventures conference in Boston sets the framework for the information below. It tells of the unique nature of the conference as it brings together, not necessarily by choice, two very different... More...

Much To Do About Video
Keeping on top of the latest technology takes effort. Everyone should be so lucky to have at least one friend, that no matter what the technology, can help make sense of the situation and enable you to become proficient with it. For me, this was the case when trying to understand the relationship between... More...

Free Ringtones - The Real Incentive Promotion 2.0
Those that know me have probably seen that I have an odd passion for the economics of online offers, that is, trying to understand and explain why certain offers do well and what it takes for an offer to succeed - not just any offer... More...

Valueclick / aQuantive
Last week, when the announcement of a merger between acquisition happy Think Partnership and iLeadMedia hit the wires, talks between two much larger companies considering a merger were breaking down. The potential merger... More...

Internet Land Grab: Part II
Talking about the domain name industry today is really talking about the Internet land grab, and in many ways it paralleled the expansion of the US. Pioneers went out and laid claim to settled a large chunk of the land. When More...

Earnings Showcase Showdown
Every three months, public companies release their performance for the previous three months. Those with an interest, often a vested interest, in the stock market tend to follow these events closely - both the lead up to the actual... More...

Information Asymmetry
Found on eBay - Turn-Key Mortgage Lead Gen Business Opportunity. Unfortunately, the listing no longer exists on eBay but it touches upon one of the more fascinating trends going on in the lead generation space - owning traffic. More...

Caveat blogger
Long before companies started to leverage blogging as a next generation CRM solution and/or a means for thought leadership, individuals were using blogging to meet their own needs and sometimes no needs at all. Not many... More...

Blogging in the Corporate World
In my inbox today, I saw a MediaPost article titled, “Execs Mull Pitfalls Of Corporate Blogs.” It stemmed from the author attending a panel at OMMA Hollywood in which the participants discussed blogging as the new CRM. The... More...

Google versus Yahoo by the numbers - Part 2
Last week we featured a column titled “Marketer’s Unite - Open Up the Kimono.” The better title and the one used on my blog, is “Google versus Yahoo by the numbers.” This week, we continue the fascinating look at... More...

Marketers Unite - Open up the Kimono
The same day that Apollo Group announced its partnership with Advertising.com was the same day that an article in AdAge told of “a war of words” as “as search-marketing vendors went toe-to-toe with Google and... More...

Web Two Point Uh-Oh: Life in a syndicated world
Were Internet advertising like wines, then Vintage 2004 would be considered a good year. The drought that plagued the online ad market for most of 2000 through the end of 2002 is now just a blip on the radar, a slight false start, not... More...

Lead Markets
The “interpreter of supply and demand,” that was a definition I came across when trying to figure out how to describe markets and marketplaces. When I hear the word, I think of the stock market, of people buying and selling in... More...

Incentive Promotion 2.0
Don’t let today’s “Effectiveness in Lead Generation” or hundred million plus dollar price tags of companies in the lead generation space fool you into thinking last year’s topic of conversation no longer shines brightly. More...

Super Bowl of Ads - Convergence
It took a little while, but the Internet has fundamentally changed offline advertising. Perhaps no other event highlights those changes as much as the Super Bowl. Companies have for years included their web sites in their TV... More...

Direct Response Sold
When it comes to affiliate marketing solutions, two pairs of companies get mentioned more often than any others. One is Commission Junction and Linkshare, the other Direct Response and KowaBunga. ValueClick snapped... More...

The Year That Will Be
Despite the rocky beginning and the ultra-competitiveness foreshadowing times to come, 2005 once again made Internet advertising history, not to mention making more than 1200 millionaires. We’ve already presented our take on Internet Advertising... More...

Components Of Affiliate Marketing
Distinct to affiliate marketing are some of the big brand advertisers you will find on them, and the ease with which a traffic source could work with them. From the ad networking point of view, trying to work with Citibank or Payless Shoes means knowing their... More...

The Year Of The Customer
Three weeks ago, collaborator and friend Cliff Kurtzman, creator and maintainer of the wonderful Online Advertising Industry M&A Deal Flow, sent me a link to a PDF white paper created by Ken Sonenclar, Managing Director of the Digital Media... More...

AOOOOOOL
By now, almost everybody outside the Internet world has heard of Google. Similarly, thanks to its first mover status and ubiquitous blanketing of American mailboxes and retail outlets with CD-ROMs, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone that hasn’t heard of... More...

What Do I Do For A Living?
Reunions of any sort follow the same template. People who have lost touch ask the same questions. Of the top three asked, the one that I have recently had to answer the most was “what do you do?” And with that, I confidently reply “I work for... More...

Finding The Sweet Spot Part 2: Sky Is The Limit
A company’s financials are an affect of their business. In Part 1 located here, we laid the groundwork for our discussion on understanding and evaluating why certain companies attain the size they do. The result was a set of criteria, that when... More...

Finding The Sweet Spot Part 1
The sweet spot for selling right now seems to lie right around a half a billion dollars. More companies than not have sold for less, much less, but there is something about that $500 million number that has many companies saying “I do.” This includes companies... More...

The Showdown
Much like an auto race where the top few cars battle it out for number one, the fight for other positions can be as exciting, if not more so, than the one going on at the front of the pack. It’s like the Masters golf tournament. Being number one is what you want... More...

The Local Internet
The weekend before Thanksgiving, I moved into a new apartment. Besides marking the first time I have lived outside of downtown Los Angeles, the move also signified another first, my using Craigslist to sell stuff. The results truly speak for themselves... More...

A Giant In The Making
Could a company that generates per year what a similar company does per month, one whose market cap equals that bigger company’s quarterly revenues, be considered the “next” iteration of it? That appears to be the question that CGI Holdings Corp... More...

Sealed Vs. Open Keyword Auction
If you have ever seen a mortgage lead form, you will know that one of the drop downs deals with the potential borrower’s credit. Not being a mortgage banker or broker, it would seem reasonable to believe that those on the lending side would only want to... More...

The Ownership of Traffic
The first half of A Crash Course on the Digital Marketing Vendor Landscape, the basis to last week’s two part Digital Marketing 101, focused on the different types of internet advertising and the companies that operate in them. The second half... More...

The Blurring of Search and Media
That Ad:Tech might have felt crowded, overlapping, and utterly confusing - reflects not on the show but the industry. Our industry used to have easily defined boundaries and companies that could fit into independent silos. Like the continents, the... More...

Digital Marketing 101 - Part I
What if you worked for a company that had a successful product, one with good offline exposure but with none online, and you were handed the responsibility of marketing it online? More...

Digital Marketing 101 - Part II
Lead generation, and co-registration come together to make up the next area of digital marketing, incentive promotion. More...

Trends Report: The Future of Direct Navigation
If you read this week’s Digital Thoughts, which of course you did, you would have read about a small conference that very few in our industry attended. For those of us that did attend, such exclusivity won’t last long as this space should soon become a significant player in the world of online advertising. More...

Tia Fix Predicts and Industry Wit
I have a confession to make: a few months ago I glimpsed into the future and decided not to tell anyone about it. I wanted to keep all the mind-blowing revelations for my company and myself even though it could have benefited just about everyone in online marketing. More...

Adware dead?
Two formerly highflying stars of the Adware world are laying off workers. What could cause this, especially in the most lucrative time of year in one of the hottest growth industries? More...

Trends Report - Affiliates and Search
In only a few years, search has gone from the new kid on the block to the de facto method for driving traffic. While most likely not intentional, the increased popularity of search has been accompanied by an ever increasing learning curve to use... More...

Trends Report - Following the Money, an Investment Recap, Part Two
Part One of Trends Report recapped six major investments, including five content driven sites totaling more than $2 billion in transaction prices. Four of those deals occurred in a span of less than four months. Yet, as impressive as that... More...

Trends Report - Following the Money, an Investment Recap, Part One
It’s hard to say when it happened, but it did. Our industry, once the unwanted offspring of the media world, operates in obscurity no longer; investors and members of the “real” world look upon it and those of us in the trenches with admiration. We now... More...

Trends Report - One Exit, One Entry
Twenty-three months ago ValueClick made a move that consolidated the affiliate marketing space by picking up Commission Junction. The deal, worth approximately $58 million, left many people wondering why ValueClick would choose to purchase another affiliate... More...

Trends Report - Murdoch's Internet Empire
The well covered $580 million acquisition of Intermix last month established Rupert Murdoch as player in the online space. If Mr. Murdoch has his way, though, Intermix will represent just the beginning of his Internet Empire. He has publicly said that... More...

Trends Report - Internet Real Estate
The housing market isn’t the only hot real estate segment...internet real estate is also reaching its peak. Like a marketing company that has figured out how to convert low value PPC keywords or an affiliate that has figured out how to create SEO... More...

Trends Report - Anatomy of a Lead Gen Industry
This week’s Digital Thoughts uses a wide brush to cover the evolution and segmentation of arbitrage activity online. In it we touch upon one of the major arbitrage activities, lead generation. It’s an industry that, regardless of how they buy... More...

Trends Report - A Polished Sneaker
Last week, I lamented the fact that no major acquisitions occurred. No sooner had those thoughts left the keypad then news of ClassesUSA’s sale to Experian became public. While Rupert Murdoch’s entry into the online space made headlines... More...

Trends - The Fab-Four
Writing about major acquisitions is among the best topics to cover. They provide a great opportunity to research companies in order to better understand the factors behind the sale. One such sale was Intermix, a company snatched up by Rupert Murdoch’s... More...

Trends Report - Microsoft and Claria
When both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal choose to a cover a topic, chances are it is a press worthy story. On the rare instances that they cover a story that involves our industry, it generally focuses on growth and the size of the market. More...

Trends Report - MGM v. Grokster
Once again Google captured headlines this week. However, their new product feature and $300 per share sustained closing price was not enough to command the majority of the internet advertising related media. Something close to the heart of any... More...

Trens Report - Clash Of The Titans
Another week, another $100 million plus deal - that has certainly been the case the past two months regarding mergers and acquisitions activity in the Internet advertising related space. This week’s deal? Viacom, the parent company to MTV Networks... More...

Trends Report - Internet Arbitrage: A Short History
The top five companies in our area account for north of $500 million in annual revenues. Almost as remarkable, these companies make the vast majority of their revenues from advertisers paying them only for the actions they generate. Hundreds of millions of... More...

Trends - Supersized Internet
On Tuesday of this week, Google broke new ground - not by unveiling an innovative feature but by becoming the largest public media company, this in only ten months of having been listed on the NASDAQ. At $80 billion, Google’s market cap overtook long time... More...

Trends Report - The Convergence
Almost six months have passed since the Super Bowl, but one marketing trend that surfaced heavily during the game continues today, and that is the use of non-internet mediums to drive interest to a web site. While not the first company to do so... More...

Trends Report - Are You Multilingual?
When it comes to email, co-registration/hosted lead generation, incentive promotion sites, and search arbitrage, arguable no other group collectively knows more than those operating in our space. One of those specialties, co-registration/hosted... More...

Trends - The Year Of The Fees
Almost a week ago, Experian made an announcement that should have sent the online ad interest more abuzz than it appears to. Last week, they announced their intent to purchase LowerMyBills for $330 million dollars with an additional $50 million.... More...

Trends - Spitzer v. Adware Aftermath
Seemingly hard to believe, it has been less than two weeks since Elliot Spitzer launched the most public case against desktop software to date. Last week’s Trends Report looked into some of the issues surrounding the case both from a global... More...

Trends - Spitzer In The Face Of AdWare
More than annoyance, most users find adware and spyware insidious, and now these users can count Elliot Spitzer, the famed New York State Attorney General, on their side. Late last week, Mr. Spitzer filed suit against Los Angeles based Intermix Media... More...

Well Timed Releases
As many as 6000 people converged in San Francisco this week for Ad:Tech - an event known for its busy exhibit hall, conference sessions, and copious night life attended by almost all in the online advertising industry. More...

Trends - Think Week
Last week’s DM Confidential included an article discussing the impacts of rapid growth, something many in our industry have experienced both in terms of revenues and people. With that growth, though, come many often-unanticipated challenges... More...

Trends Report - 180's Solution
One of the most consistent trends in our industry over the past year revolves around companies in our space either selling a portion of their company for funding or buying another company for growth. More...

Oz Behind The Curtain
In an industry that at times appears to be completely anonymous and automated I find it rather relieving when I receive the “So and so has moved on to pursue other interests and so and so will be your new account rep” email. I tend to get so entirely caught up with... More...

Trends Report - Look Internaly
Traditionally, this section of the DM Confidential looks externally at the market. Topics range from capital markets activity to insights gleaned from watching Yahoo and Google indirectly and directly compete for dominance. This week’s article takes a step back... More...

Trends - Blogging’s value
The latest edition of Webster’s New World College Dictionary contains at least one entry that won’t mean much to those who do not user the internet frequently. The word isn’t “wedgie,” even though it gaine More...

Trends - content, search and commerce
Arguably the biggest purchase impacting our space last year occurred in June when AOL announced its intent to purchase Advertising.com for north of $400 million. Two months prior, in March, another substantial acquisition took place. This one saw Ask Jeev More...

Trends Report - Investment activity into our space
As anticipated, this year has brought no shortage of investment activity into our space. Just last week, for example CGI Holding Corp - not to be confused with the famous dot com bomb CMGI - d/b/a Think Partnership (AMEX: THX) announced its intent to acqu More...

Trends
A little more than one week ago a press release went out that seemed as though it should have generated more interest than it did. The company behind the release, Snap.com, offers a product unlike any other on the market. More...

Trends
This week marks the two month anniversary of Google AdWords Affiliate Policy Change. It focused on and impacted a very specific type of activity - that of search engine arbitrage. More...

Trends Report
In 2004, some of the best known companies in our space received funding. Fastclick raised $75 million, Netblue another $20 million. With the online ad market so hot, it makes sense to expect that trend to continue. More...

Trends Report - Search Engine Activity and Tools
Search as an industry is always in the news. And these past few week's have been no exception. Rather than earnings or user base statistics, the most recent news has focused on feature developments and operational strategy More...

Trends Report - Super Bowl
One of the best days in advertising recently passed. So unique is this day - it is one of the few times where television viewers look forward to ads. From a marketer’s perspective too, this day is unique. More...

Trends Report - State and federal legislation
State and federal legislation greatly influence operations for any business, and ours does not escape this. More...

Trends Report
As companies announced their prior quarter and year end figures, much of the recent industry news focused on 2004 being a record year for online advertising with hopes that the momentum would continue into 2005. More...

Trends Report - Internet Advertising
Internet advertising still manages to capture at least one or two headlines daily. More importantly, the stories continue to paint upbeat forecasts for the industry. More...

Trends Report: When Do I Get Paid?: The Metric of Pay Day
Despite the growth of the online advertising industry over the last year and a return to profitability for many companies, the main question that arises during IO negotiations or while pounding out a deal is “When Do I Get Paid?”. More...

Trends Report: Saturation
I’m flying back to the East Coast via Chicago and realizing there is nothing more beautiful than a lightning storm this high up. I’m crammed into a small plane and the air condition doesn’t work More...

Trends Report: Registration Path Redux
With declines in email open rates, continuing frustrations with the contextual market and dismal banner clicks, driving traffic has been a formidable task for publishers. More...

Trends Report: Desktop Publishing, a Conversation with 180 Solutions
The desktop space has been a battleground between advertisers, publishers and affiliates in the online marketing industry for years. More...

Trends Report: Spam Redux
The 2003 DMA’s in Orlando, Fl was inundated with talk of the impending California Spam Law that had just gotten through the state’s legislature. More...

Developing Trends: A Tourist’s Guide to Online Marketing
Online direct marketing for advertisers seems so easy More...