Brian Morrissey

Pop-Ups Win Another Unpopularity Contest Pop-up ads can’t catch a break. Researcher Gartner Group’s GartnerG2 unit released the results of a survey done this summer that found Internet users pegged pop-ups as the most irritating form of advertising on the Net. In GartnerG2’s poll of 2,667 Internet users, 78.3 percent of respondents tagged pop-up advertisements […]

Yahoo! announced Monday that it will allow users to add free 30-second video and voice clips to their personal ads on the portal. With the new feature, Yahoo! Personals users have the option of recording a short voice greeting through the phone that accompanies their text advertisement. Those with a Web cam can record a […]

After less than a week on the job, AOL’s new executive vice president of brand marketing, Leonard Short, decided to dismiss the beleaguered Internet unit’s ad agency, Interpublic Group’s Gotham. After working with Gotham for eight years, AOL will put the account up for review. The AOL Time Warner Internet unit spends nearly $1 billion […]

Looking to buff up its stodgy Classic brand, Coca-Cola on Thursday kicked off a new advertising campaign that features a variety of interactive components, in an attempt by the beverage giant to capture a larger share of the youth market. While the overwhelming thrust of the “Coca-Cola … Real” platform will be television advertising featuring […]

Rival ad-serving companies ValueClick and 24/7 Real Media announced a resolution to their yearlong patent-infringement case on Thursday, with ValueClick agreeing to license 24/7 Real Media’s ad-serving technology in exchange for an undisclosed payment. The agreement calls for terms of the deal to remain confidential. The settlement brings to a close one of the last […]

In its continued efforts to overhaul its marketing leadership team, AOL brings in another new executive. The struggling Internet unit of AOL Time Warner announced Thursday the appointment of Leonard Short, a former executive in charge of advertising at Charles Schwab, as executive vice president for branding. He will head up AOL’s U.S. and international […]

Trend Micro Adds Postini Spam-Fighting Software Spam-fighting software maker Postini has linked up with anti-virus software maker Trend Micro to promote its software to Trend Micro’s customers. The deal calls for Tokyo-based Trend Micro to offer Postini software as an add-on option to its own suite of anti-virus and Internet content security offerings. The company […]

Having notched a series of recent wins against Google for paid listings contracts, Overture was pleased to learn its rival might soon feel even more pressure, this time in its core algorithmic search business, now that Yahoo! has purchased search technology company Inktomi. Overture’s chief financial officer, Todd Tappin, said the commitment by Yahoo! to […]

The North American division of Swedish carmaker Volvo inked a deal with Microsoft’s MSN to showcase ads on the official North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) site, hosted by MSN Autos. The pact calls for Volvo to deploy banner and skyscraper ads featuring its new XC90 SUV on the homepage and manufacturer pages. Ads will […]

Rebutting a recent finding that spam is not a drain on worker productivity, San Francisco-based market research company Ferris Research has estimated that unwanted commercial e-mail cost U.S. corporations $8.9 billion in 2002. Ferris computed the cost of spam by calculating its costly effects in three areas: loss of worker productivity; consumption of bandwidth and […]

The much-maligned banner ad was further maligned Monday, when search engine Ask Jeeves announced its Ask.com site would no longer carry banners, instead relying on targeted ads and paid listings. As of the beginning of the year, the Emeryville, Calif-based company has not accepted banner ad placements, winnowing its advertising units to two: a targeted […]

With most studies painting spam as imminently reaching epidemic proportions, a new poll by Harris Interactive shows Web surfers increasingly frustrated by the deluge of unsolicited commercial e-mail hitting their in-boxes. The Harris Poll, which questioned over 2,200 U.S. adults about how annoying they found spam, discovered the vast majority thinks spamming should be made […]