The Battle of the E-mail Coalitions [ChannelSeven.com]

Are there too many e-mail marketing committees, councils, and coalitions?

My previous comments on this issue. 

Cyber Atlas: Online Ads Are Bigger, Richer

DoubleClick is reporting that the Internet ads it served in 2002 were bigger and more likely to include rich media.

In the release of its fourth-quarter and full-year ad-serving report, the online ad giant said that larger ad formats, such as skyscrapers and large rectangles, saw sharply increased use, although standard sizes still accounted for the lion's share of ads.

Continuing a trend noted in DoubleClick's last report, rich media sustained its march into the mainstream, with use growing 43 percent over the year. In the fourth quarter, rich-media ads accounted for 25 percent of all ads served by DoubleClick. The report said it expects this trend will continue, with rich-media ads growing another 10 percent in the first quarter of 2003.

The question that still remains unanswered is have ad got bigger in real terms, given that average screen resolutions are becoming smaller? Our own Olivier Travis isn't convinced.

Last week Ben Edleman released his report on typo-squatting  (for example the regsitration of geapliances.com in order, imho, to divert traffic intended for gepappliances.com, to a porno site).

Today's ICANNWatch and Friday's Copyfight linked to a paper from Seth Finklestein, describing a program for "fuzzy-searching" of domain names, somewhat remiscent of Google's "Did you mean . . . " spell-checker. 

Can "fuzzy" functionality be added to a browser?  What if typing geapliances.com into an address bar led to at least a portion of the screen saying "Did you mean to access geappliances.com" (with perhaps additional descriptive info).

Why can't an address bar in a browser have increased functionality - for example can common names replace urls in the address bar?  Alternately, can a common name system replace an address bar?  A good common name system would allow Joe's Pizza in Armonk to coexist with Joe's Pizza  in Thornwood.

This leads me to one of my pet obsessions: Brand As Navigator  by which I mean improving the experience of the consumer (and brand owner) in matching a request for a brand with an authroized source of the brand.  We are not talking about policing measures such as better UDRPs or better "sunrise periods" for new TLDs, but by the development and deployment of better navigational systems on the Internet.

My thinking starts with several propositions:

1.  The domain name system is an addressing system, not a directory.

2.  Users misuse the DNS as a directory when they use the address bar of a browser to guess a domain name.

3.  Trademark owners, domain name speculators, ICANN, registrars and TLD registries all institutionalized this misuse in their own ways.

4.  Development of good navigational systems may have been stunted by the diversion of resources into the domain name system (note the use of "may have").

5. The magnitude of trademark infringement, trademark dilution, cyber-squatting, typo-squatting,  and mere consumer confusion, has likely been increased by the absence of better navigational systems and the emphaiss on domain names.

The trademark lobby, in its relationship with the DNS, has taken primarily a reactive role, namely advocating methods to control the daunting amount of infringing behavior (disclosure - as a former member of INTA's Internet committee, and as a current member of the IPC of ICANN, I'll take blame on that point). 

What we have not seen from the trademark lobby, nor, to the best of my knowledge, from the business constituency of ICANN, is a push towards the creation of new navigational systems which would allow the user to utilize brand names and business names as navigational systems - without the (in my view) unacceptable level of external costs with which the DNS currently burdens brand owners.

RealNames (regardless of your views on whether it was good or bad), was at least an attempt at solving the problem.  I personally don't think that the underlying technology of a global navigational system should be proprietary, and RealNames' demise removed the threat of someone "cornering" name navigation for now.  However, Microsoft (RealName's major investor), reportedly has shown broad interest in the technology.

This to me suggests that the time has come for a discussion between, among other concerned parties, ICANN and its constituencies, the IETF, and the W3C to look at the next generation of navigational systems.  To be sure, there are various initiatives in the broad area, such as the Common Name Resolution Protocol.  My worry is that these protocols are being developed without input from brand owners (see parapgraph 8 in this RFC).  I hope that changes.  At this stage of the process, making sure that the person typing in DELTA gets the DELTA they want (and not an unrelated DELTA or an infringer), is a usability enhancement issue, not a legal issue.

eMarketer: Internet Influences TV Time

BURST! research surveyed nearly 5,000 US internet users in January 2003 and found that 26.6% say they are currently watching less television than they did one year ago. In fact, 40% say they spend more time in a typical week online than they do watching TV. BURST! notes that 43.0% of people between the ages of 25 and 44 say they use more internet than TV, whereas over 39% of those under the age of 18 say they watch more TV than go online.

Media Post: Monday Big For Advertiser Websites

A number of television advertisers' websites posted dramatic increases in the number of visitors within minutes of the actual television advertisement airing. For example, Cadillac ran five ads between 8:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., and visitors to cadillac.com jumped more than tenfold over this period. Also, Warner Brothers ran one ad for The Matrix sequels between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and one for Terminator 3 between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Consumers were clearly interested in learning more about these upcoming films, with traffic jumping more than 300 percent at their respective sites. And, H&R Block ran seven ads between 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.; traffic more than doubled at the site during this time period.

While a great many people visited Super Bowl advertiser sites during the game, the highest traffic levels to these sites occurred the Monday after, when Web users at home and work resumed their regular weekday surfing routines. This would appear to indicate that "word of mouth advertising" played a key role in increasing interest in the advertised products and services -- and that the Internet played a key role in satisfying consumers' needs.

UCLA Internet Report # 3 released <get full report>

News.com reported: "A UCLA study revealed Americans who go online rank the Internet as the most important information source, outpacing TV, newspapers and radio.

The study, released Friday by the University of California, Los Angeles, is just the latest example of how the Internet is gaining ground against other forms of media for information, entertainment and news."