Christopher Saunders

NEW YORK — Revenue for the online ad industry dropped by 4.1 percent during the second quarter, its seventh-straight quarter in decline, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The New York-based IAB, which sponsored the research, said the Web ad industry took in $1.46 billion during the second quarter. That’s a 22 percent […]

With customers becoming more savvy about broadband, it’s not enough to just promote the speed of connectivity, according to DirecTV Broadband. The ISP is revamping its DSL service pitch by focusing on value-added services. While introductory ads in the ISP’s new “My Gateway to a More Thrilling Internet” campaign continue the branding begun with last […]

John Costello has resigned his post as chief marketing officer at Yahoo! , after about a year on the job, the company confirmed. Costello now heads across the country from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! to Atlanta, where he will take over as chief marketing officer for The Home Depot . The company waved away suggestions that […]

Bigfoot Interactive Launches New Marketing Platform New York-based e-mail marketing provider Bigfoot Interactive took the wraps off the new version of its e-mail delivery platform, dubbed DREAM. DREAM — short for Direct Response E-mail Application Manager — provides greater segmentation, content assembly and personalization features than earlier versions of the company’s offerings, which are available […]

Venerable ad agency Leo Burnett Worldwide is merging its interactive, direct and database businesses into a single unit, in a bid to better service clients looking to communicate with customers through one-to-one messaging. Under the plan, the new unit will be dubbed iLeo — that’s “i” as in “individual” — and will act as an […]

NetCreations is the latest major player in the e-mail list management business to explore the controversial practice of “append.” The New York-based list manager, which has made a name for itself by concentrating on building double-opt-in lists, said it will now work with a sibling firm to help direct mail marketers send e-mail to consumers […]

Conventional wisdom places a company’s e-mail communications within the realm of direct marketing, but the channel also has an important effect on how consumers view the sender’s brand, according to findings by Executive Summary Consulting and Quris. In research funded by Quris, a Denver, Colo.-based e-mail marketing provider, Greenfield Online surveyed about 1,250 frequent e-mail […]

Internet ad giant DoubleClick continues to feel the sting of sluggish interactive marketing spending, as it reported lingering pressure on its business during third quarter. While at the high end of prior guidance, revenue for the firm declined to $74.6 million, down 1.4 percent from last quarter, and 19.5 percent from a year ago. That […]

DoubleClick is aiming to beef up its rich media capabilities by formalizing an alliance with Macromedia , the leading developer in the space. The deal solidifies sporadic, and largely fruitless, discussions between the two firms during the past two years, centered around making tracking and trafficking easier. Although few details were disclosed of how the […]

U-Haul and 1-800 Contacts are joining the legal battles against the advertisers and software firms responsible for site-targeted pop-up ads, as pressure on the controversial advertising model increases. Phoenix, Ariz.-based U-Haul alleges that WhenU.com, a software company headquartered in New York, delivers ads for competitors to users of its SaveNow software who visit Uhaul.com — […]

Microsoft’s MSN service is poised to spend $300 million for advertising and marketing in its bid to unseat America Online as the top Internet service. With the heavy spending — the largest for any Microsoft product this year, and ever for MSN — the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is aiming to stir up consumer buzz […]

The American Association of Advertising Agencies will pick up the process of hammering out XML-based standards for ad buying, selling and trafficking from now-defunct startup MediaPort. New York-based MediaPort, which shut its doors earlier this year, had planned to spearhead the effort to create electronic standards for the entire advertising process, for all forms of […]