Brian Morrissey

Overstock.com filed separate legal complaints against Gator and WhenU.com, alleging the adware companies violated its trademark and engaged in unfair business practices by serving ads on its Web sites. The suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Overstock’s home state of Utah, also charge Gator and WhenU of engaging in unfair business practices by serving […]

Overture Services announced on Monday the official release of its long-awaited contextual-advertising offering, four months after archrival Google released its own. Content Match gives Overture’s 88,000 advertisers another outlet for their keyword-based ads. With the product, keyword-triggered text links appear on relevant content pages of distribution partners. Overture announced four distribution partners: MSN, auto site […]

RealMedia Europe Rolls Out Analytics RealMedia Europe announced on Thursday the availability of Open Insight, a new Web analytics tool. The 24/7 Real Media division said Open Insight would give customers a real-time tool for measuring and analyzing their Web traffic. The analytics tool is aimed at marketers, giving them the ability to do behavior […]

The largest U.S. corporations have shown improvement in handling online customer interactions but many still fall short, according to a new study. The Customer Respect Group, a Bellevue, Wash.-based consultancy, released the findings in its 2003 Online Customer Respect Study, showing that U.S. businesses showed improvement managing customer interactions online. Using its customer respect index […]

Paid-search company FindWhat.com is in pursuit what it says is a scam artist selling a fraudulent e-mail database of FindWhat advertisers. In an e-mail message sent out recently, an entity called PayPerClickXP offered recipients access to a database of over 23,000 FindWhat advertisers along with contact information for the companies. PayPerClickXP said the Excel spreadsheet […]

Napster, the deceased file-sharing network, announced on Thursday that it hired ad agency Venables, Bell & Partners to design a promotional campaign for its re-launch set for sometime in the next eight to 10 months. MediaSmith, a San Francisco-based company that handles the same duties for Napster parent company Roxio, will complement the Venables campaign. […]

Improved viewing quality and more offerings have led many marketers to try online video advertising, but their spending is still small and will likely remain so for the next few years, according to a new study. Jupiter Research, which is owned by the parent company of this site, said 65 percent of marketers it surveyed […]

TiVo and Chrysler Group announced on Wednesday an ad deal for the carmaker to promote its new Crossfire sports coupe through the digital video recorder (DVR) company’s branded entertainment area. Chrysler will run a package on TiVo Showcase from July 8 to July 22 offering viewers the chance to schedule a viewing for the five […]

The spam problem has gotten so bad that it threatens to overwhelm e-mail as an effective communications medium, according to Microsoft founder Bill Gates. In an open letter posted on the Microsoft Web site on Tuesday, Gates said Microsoft took the spam problem seriously and would work on multiple fronts to fight it, including improved […]

Michigan’s state Senate unanimously passed an anti-spam law on Tuesday that calls for the creation of a do-not-e-mail list. The law still needs to be passed by the state’s house of representatives and signed into law by the governor. Under the terms of the bill, passed 37 to zero, the state’ consumer and industry services […]

Reebok plans to bring back its successful fictional character Terry Tate in a new ad to support its new football cross-training shoe. Tate, the “office linebacker” who wreaks havoc on inconsiderate office workers, will appear in a new TV commercial for the July 1 launch of Reebok’s new football shoe, the Scrimmage. The ad features […]

Online auction juggernaut eBay announced on Tuesday a new advertising program for its sellers that takes a cue from the red-hot paid search business. “Keywords on eBay,” run through Conducive’s AdMarketplace, will allow eBay sellers to bid on keywords to trigger banner ads touting the seller. Keywords can be eBay categories, types of items, brand […]