Brian Morrissey

With the ad industry ending the year on a positive note, many industry forecasts predicted a rosier 2003. According to eMarketer, the online advertising industry will grow by 6.3 percent next year, after two years of double-digit contraction. Of course, the online advertising industry’s recovery depends on growth in the overall advertising industry, which in […]

Following up on its earlier TiVo marketing campaigns, Best Buy rolled out its first movie sponsorship, linking with the digital video recorder (DVR) company to distribute a short film. Debuting yesterday, “Waiting for Woody” is a 30-minute comedy produced by Standard Film Trust, directed by and starring Grant Heslov. The film recounts the meeting of […]

Levi Strauss and Co. is launching a four-week interactive marketing campaign that gives consumers the chance to win a jewel-encrusted pair of Levi’s jeans by entering an online contest. The contest will culminate on Jan. 16, when Levi’s will air the final clue in the contest during a 60-second Super Bowl ad. The San Francisco-based […]

In the aftermath of a disastrous 2001, the online advertising industry had nowhere to go but up. And the industry, slowly and fitfully, did respond in 2002, showing hints by the end of the year that it was prepared to turn the corner on the two-year downturn brought on by the dot-com meltdown. On the […]

Online incentive marketer MyPoints.com announced Monday that it would open a career center for its members in partnership with Talentology.com, which will provide its skills-based job search engine. MyPoints.com operates loyalty programs, in which members earn discounts by buying from advertisers, taking Web surveys, and agreeing to receive marketing e-mails though its BonusMail program. With […]

Speaking before an audience of investment analysts earlier this month, Yahoo!’s chief executive, Terry Semel, was positively giddy about the potential for deriving revenue from the search business. He called paid search “a beautiful system” that matched up advertisers with those interested in their wares. Having long partnered with Google for algorithmic search and Overture […]

DoubleClick Closes Japan Share Sale Online ad giant DoubleClick announced Thursday that its Japanese offshoot has a new majority owner. Trans Cosmos Inc. (TCI), a Japanese marketing company, completed a tender offer for 45,049 shares of DoubleClick Japan, giving it 62 percent of the company’s voting shares. In exchange, DoubleClick received about $14 million in […]

Orbitz, the No. 2 pop-under advertiser on the Internet, has begun rolling out ads that invite users to make reindeer talk, putt golf balls and kick field goals; and many of these pop-unders possess a unique trait — they take people to the Orbitz site without even requiring a click-through. The new holiday-themed ads feature […]

Facing fierce competition in the online job search market, CareerBuilder announced Tuesday the launch of a yearlong ad push in a variety of media. The Reston, Va.-based company, owned equally by newspaper giants Gannett, Tribune and Knight Ridder, said it would advertise on television, in print, on radio, and with outdoor advertising. The campaign, spending […]

The opening of the holiday season was accompanied by an increase in spam e-mail messages, according to figures released by spam-fighting software maker Brightmail. The San Francisco-based company said it tracked a 21 percent increase in spam messages caught up in its filters during the month following Thanksgiving. Brightmail said it blocked more than 16 […]

Affinity marketer MemberWorks announced Monday it inked an agreement with America Online to push its membership programs to AOL’s 35 million users. The agreement calls for the Stamford, Conn., company to market nine of its membership programs across the AOL network, offering AOL users discounts and sales offers from MemberWorks’ 400 retailers and service providers, […]

Thanks in large part to an increasing number of people looking for love online, the market for paid online content grew to $361.4 million, a new study by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) shows, more than double what it was a year ago. In the first nine months of the year, U.S. consumers had already […]