DoubleClick's latest Ad Serving Report sheds positive light for the online advertising sector. Among the findings:

• View-Through Rates* Increase By 47%
  
• Online Advertising Gets Bigger And More Dynamic
  
• Rich Media Continues To Have Higher Response Rates Than Non-Rich Media
  
• Marketers Continue To Find Targeting Effective
  
• Online Ads Are Becoming More Memorable

“It is encouraging to see from the data that online advertising is becoming just like any other established advertising medium, adopting techniques such as contextual targeting and dayparting, borrowed from the print and television worlds,” said Doug Knopper, Vice President and General Manager, Online Advertising Solutions, DoubleClick. “Marketers should no longer just rely on the click-through rate as a response metric; we encourage our clients to also use the view-through rate to assess post-impression response to optimize campaigns and gain a more complete picture of conversions.”

Very encouraging indeed.

* View-through rates assess users who take action within 30 days of seeing an ad, but do not click on a banner.

[MarketingFix]

Will Femia is showing the MSNBC weblogs he has been instrumental in creating. I'm posting this from the stage at... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Now there are a few services that, for a fee, promise to take over that work, to weed through the deluge of information, selecting effective treatments and trashing fakes. The conundrum is no longer evaluating health advice, but evaluating the evaluators. [Tomalak's Realm]

We are delighted to see that the popular weblog application, Movable Type, is adding support for choosing Creative Commons licenses in its upcoming version. [Creative Commons: weblog]

ClickZ B-Blog coverage - John Lawlor's feedback

Excellent article. The use of blogs in business is in a formative stage. In fact, in many ways the possibilities of blogs for business parallel where e-mail marketing was in 1995:

• A strange look comes over people when I suggest blogs are an outstanding opportunity to communicate with their customers, prospects, peers, or employees. "Why would I do that?" was the standard response to e-mail marketing in '95 -- that same question is asked about business blogs today.
  
• "How can I use this approach to immediately market to millions?" is another parallel response. Blogs are about building relationships and trust, one relationship at a time. The bloggers that excite and provide value to their readers get traffic. One recent example is Gizmodo, a blog focused on "gadgets." It is pulling 50,000-plus page views a week, just five months after launch. History has proven e-mailing to millions of people who don't want to hear from you is possible but not good business. Identifying, attracting, and respecting the people who want or need your information is a sustainable business.
  
• In the early days of the Internet, there was an assumption that a business or individual had to put out more than they expected to get back. For example, e-mail newsletters were about helping the recipients, not just about selling them something. In the mid-'90s, savvy businesses such as Sun and IDG built credibility and communication with their customers and prospects by providing valuable and timely information with the expectation they were building profitable, long-term relationships. Examples of blogs building trust while building business are Scripting News and Marketing Fix. Scripting News is billed as the oldest living blog. Marketing Fix is actually five individuals pooling news, information, and commentary from their blogs into a group blog.

John Lawlor www.johnlawlor.com Thanks ClickZ.

original article link  The B-Blogs Are Coming

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