Business 2.0: Return of the Dotcom Media Flameouts

With the launch of the Wall Street Journal's Media and Marketing Edition and it's Health Edition, more and more mainstream media are adopting blog style publishing platforms. Most, though, are still closed communities in the sense that they do not "link out" to news sources other then those within their parent organization.

This article discusses the benefits of both mainstream, "closed" online publishing and decentralized, "open" publishing. Both have benefits. Both have limitations. Both, however, have a lasting purpose.

[MarketingFix]

MediaPost: Rich Media Email: Slow Progress

A new study out by Jupiter Research called, ""Rich Media Email: Analyzing Costs and Prioritizing Budgets" finds rich media usage in email is slowing.

Part of the problem is the increased cost of producing rich media email. The report states, "rich media email can cost considerably more than HTML email. Creative and production fees can exceed $10,000, and rich media serving fees add an extra $0.02 to $0.04 per message delivered-all to reach as little as one-third of the email list with a rich message."

Another cause for limited usage are email clients. Many email platforms such as AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo do not allow through most rich media. And with Microsoft's pending release of Outlook making it easier for users to block html email let alone rich media, the opinion of the study is that usage of rich media in email will decline even further.

Related Posts:

Be Careful With Rich Media

Bond Popping Up in an Inbox Near You

[MarketingFix]

Imedia Connection: The Digital Edge’s Todd Fraipont

An interview with Todd Fraipont, West Coast Director of Strategy at The Digital Edge (a Y&R company,) with interesting comments on reach/frequency (like it or not, advertisers want R/F metrics, so give it to them if you want their money,) and dayparts:

I think many mistakenly equate impression skews across time of day with performance skews when it comes to the topic of day-parting online. Yes, any given campaign will almost certainly have the majority of impressions served during the day and relatively few from midnight to 5:00 am simply because people consume the Internet more during the day. But that is not necessarily an indication of performance superiority.

[MarketingFix]

Clickz: B2B Search Best Practices

Think about your business, your sales cycle, and the way visitors to your site interact with the content, as well as which calls to action you have built into the site. You might even want to place different calls to action on your site, to appeal to various types of prospects.

The way you use copy in your B2B listings is also critical. If you're trying to attract searchers in a particular phase of the buying cycle, tune your copy appropriately. Be aware that for your industry consumer marketers may share some keywords. The keyword "lumber" might be searched by both businesses and consumers, while "lumber kiln" or "hardwood lumber molding" are more likely to be business searches.

[MarketingFix]

Business Blogging, Free Seminar, NYC, June 12, 6:30pm.

eCommerceSIG: Intro to Business Blogs

If you're in the area, come on by and hear yours truly, along with Anil Dash (of Moveable Type), John Lawlor (of Blogs4Business), Elizabeth Spiers (of Gawker) and Aaron Bailey (of National Review Online) wax philosophical about how great blogs are as a publishing and business tool.

This comes right on the heels of ClickZ's Weblog Business Strategies conference, where John Lawlor and I will also be speaking.

[MarketingFix]

[NY Times] [Scripting News]

Jimmy Guterman: Management by Blog. [Scripting News]

2003 Advertising Age Report: The Findings
Industry Revenue Increased Only 0.6% Last Year

Inside the World's Top 25 Ad Agencies and Organizations
36-Page Agency Report Profiles

Agency Report Charts Page
Links to The Eight Major Data Charts

Agency Market Share Pie Chart
How Five Holding Companies Control 76% of the World Ad
Market

Family Tree of Advertising Organizations
A Visual 'Who Owns What' of Advertising Holding Companies and Agencies

Tip of the hat to Tom Deierlein of Dynamic Logic for this round up.

[MarketingFix]

iMedia Connection: Buy Me Some Traffic

Here's a great overview piece on paid search (Inclusion and Placement) marketing from its evolution to its future.

[MarketingFix]

iMedia Connection: Five Principles for the "Always-on Age"

Online guru G.M. O'Connell, founder of Modem Media, espouses five driving principles to follow when creating succesful marketing in the increasingly connected world in which we live.

1. Create a sustainable mutual value exchange
   
2. Deliver experiences rather than messages
   
3. Detach and distribute: Use an array of vehicles to reach
   customers at the right time and place
   
4. Optimize: Continually assess and improve performance
   
5. Integrate experiences across all channels (Practice “The
   New Integration”).
   

Now, if it were [MarketingFix]

Imagine a technology platform that can help you market yourself and your skills while increasing brand awareness. [Into the MyST]

David Carraher: Weblogs in Education. [Scripting News]

[Scripting News]

How Well Do Websites Listen to Their Visitors?

It is encouraging that web sites are listening to users more effectively but there is still some work to do.

According to the report, for the first time, all 50 of the audited websites enabled users to submit some form of feedback. And an increasing percentage of these 50 websites empowered their users to provide their opinions at the page-level: 64% in 2001, 77% in 2002 and 86% in 2003. However, most of the top 50 continued to make the user feedback process more difficult than best practices recommend. For example, only 2 of the top 50 ensured that their feedback technique was always visible on the page (i.e. above the "fold").

[MarketingFix]

ing

RSS Syndication is a popular form of XML that is available for free to sites to tap into a stream of "headlines" from information providers large and small. The NY Times, Wired and the BBC are examples of major providers that value the free traffic that RSS syndication provides them.

Sites can individually select what headlines that they want to display and add their own comments to the selected headlines.

RSS syndication also works as an outbound feed to other sites. This can make any information publisher a syndicator and extend their content well beyond their existing traffic.

. This gives me goosebumps, big time. [Scripting News]

World's Largest Media Buyer Praises Online Ads.

Forbes: Online Ads Finally Click

On May 5, the advertising industry was in the midst of one of the hottest TV-ad-buying seasons ever. That's why Madison Avenue types were stunned when Jack Klues, chief executive of Starcom Mediavest, the world's largest media buyer, chose that time to praise online advertising.

Klues said his firm, a unit of Publicis Group, would expand its online efforts during the television-ad-sales frenzy, "It's time for us to use online as a way to deliver television commercials for our clients," he said at the iMedia Summit, a gathering of 500 online-advertising buyers and sellers.

. . .

Very low rates and video. That's the magic formula convincing traditional print and television advertisers to buy online.

Seems like good news/bad news. Good news is more signs of major advertisers appreciating online. Bad news is they still think it's about bargain-basement CPMs and recycling TV ads online.

Related Posts:

OPA Study Finds Ad Revenue Up in Q1

Is Online Advertising Recovering? (NYT)

Biz Week Lauds Online Ad Recovery

Major Brands Shift Ad Budgets Online

[MarketingFix]

New Feedster Feature: View Last 100 Searches!. [The FuzzyBlog!]