Brian Morrissey

America Online, the beset Internet unit of AOL Time Warner , has continued to turn around its flagging online ad unit despite its declining subscriber numbers. The key to AOL’s ad strategy has been to focus on tailored ad sponsorship deals that intertwine with the online service’s content. Another big help has been the interactive […]

Report: Spam Outnumbers Legit E-Mail Last month, more spam was sent than legitimate e-mail, according to e-mail security services provider MessageLabs. In its monthly roundup of e-mail trends, the firm found that 55 percent of the 133.9 million e-mails scanned by its system were flagged as spam. The total number of spam messages is up […]

Yahoo! announced on Wednesday the appointment of Cammie Dunaway as its chief marketing officer. As CMO, Dunaway will take control of Yahoo!’s worldwide branding and product marketing efforts at a time when the portal is attempting to continue its momentum from the remarkable turnaround engineered by CEO Terry Semel. She will report to Dan Rosensweig, […]

Google announced on Tuesday a deal with AOL Canada to provide paid listings for the online service and on its portal. The deal calls for Google to provide three paid listings, generated from Google’s 100,000 AdWords advertisers, under a “sponsored links” heading near the top of the AOL.ca and AOL service search results pages. The […]

Ad technology player ValueClick on Tuesday acquired paid search company Search123.com for $5 million in cash. With the deal, Westlake Village, Calif.-based ValueClick will have a paid search complement to its suite on online advertising offerings. ValueClick will pay privately held Search123 $3.3 million in cash and another $1.7 million to cover transaction costs and […]

TiVo announced on Monday a new audience measurement service that it said would give marketers deeper information on consumers’ TV viewing habits. Advertisers will be able to gauge viewing patterns within TV programs, giving them a detailed look at how TV viewers consume both programming and advertising. TiVo units transmit the data when they dial […]

Paid listings provider Sprinks announced on Monday a deal with America Online for its contextual advertising links to appear on Netscape, CompuServe and AOL Instant Messenger content pages. The multiyear deal places ContentSprinks text ads on a variety of sections within both the Netscape and CompuServe portals, including in the sports, news, television and celebrities […]

NetIQ announced on Monday the availability of a search marketing analysis tool within its WebTrends Reporting Series that will give customers an idea of how their search programs are performing. NetIQ will now include a tool in both its software and hosted WebTrends Reporting Series that allows companies to sort out how customers are using […]

In Ask Jeeves CEO Skip Battle’s favorite metaphor, his company is offering Web searchers tea to Google’s coffee. While other search sites try to beat Google by brewing a better flavor of coffee, Ask Jeeves has a natty British butler brewing up an alternative. This week, with the simultaneous news that the company would sell […]

In a letter sent to members earlier this week, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) took a stab at outlining the group’s approach to spam, in a working strategy both critics and the DMA say is short on details. The strategy was outlined in a letter sent to the DMA’s 4,700 members. In it, DMA President […]

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade group representing sellers of online advertising, launched a multi-media ad blitz on Thursday aimed at convincing advertisers and agencies to make online a bigger part of their media plans. The seven-month campaign, designed by Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners, will feature real-life “superhero” executives who improved brand awareness through […]

E-mail marketers enjoyed higher open and click-through rates in the first quarter, according to DoubleClick , despite the threat of the spam deluge drowning out their messages. The marketing technology company’s first-quarter e-mail trend report, compiled using more than 2 billion marketing e-mails it sent for clients, shows the state of e-mail marketing surprisingly strong, […]