Christopher Saunders

AOL Time Warner’s America Online is claiming victory with a settlement in a lawsuit against accused spammer Netvision Audiotext. While specific terms of the settlement are confidential, Fort Lauderdale, Fl.-based Netvision Audiotext, which operates a network of adult Web sites, agreed to pay what AOL spokespeople called “significant” monetary damages. The company, which also does […]

The pay-for-placement search engine wars continue, as LookSmart inks a new client in the Australian and New Zealand unit of Web portal Yahoo! . New York-based LookSmart, which competes with market leader Overture and upstart Google for syndication deals with high-traffic portals, will deliver its paid search listings to Yahoo! Australia & NZ, in return […]

German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG is looking to renegotiate its $1 billion online advertising contract with Terra Lycos , a development that could set back the Web portal and ISP player’s plan for profitability. The agreement, signed in May 2000, specified that Bertelsmann, a major advertiser on the Spanish-American company’s sites, would buy $325 million […]

The United States Navy is turning to AOL Latin America for help in reaching out to U.S. Latinos and Hispanics. Through the advertising agreement with the Navy, Fort Lauderdale, Fl.-based AOL Latin America will launch a recruiting campaign centered chiefly around the AOL Latino area on America Online, which it administers. Spanish- and English-language ads […]

Web publisher Snowball.com revealed on Friday that its auditor, Ernst & Young LLP, is doubtful about its future, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which in recent weeks has embarked on a massive cost-cutting operation, said in its 10-K that Ernst & Young has “substantial doubts about the company’s […]

E-mail marketer Naviant said it has acquired online loyalty play SweepsClub.com, in a bid to launch an online pay-for-performance unit. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed. Three-year-old SweepsClub, which has offices in Deerfield Beach, Fla. and New York City, specializes in running sweepstakes and contests. Consumers receive entries into contests by registering for trial […]

E-mail marketing player Bigfoot Interactive is taking steps to beef up revenues by realigning its sales staff along vertical industry lines. The New York-based firm said it has created seven client services groups, each designed to focus on a different sector, including automotive; financial services; publishing; healthcare and consumer goods; retail; entertainment/travel; telecom/technology; or non-profit/public/education. […]

Online ad leader DoubleClick said it has agreed to settle all of the state and federal class action lawsuits filed against it in the wake of its now-scrapped plan to merge offline and online data. In the suits, which had been filed in January 2000 after DoubleClick announced its intent to integrate personally identifiable consumer […]

Ansell Healthcare, manufacturer of the LifeStyles latex condom brand, is turning to an animated Web cartoon to educate consumers — and to push its product. The Red Bank, N.J.-based company’s cartoon, using Macromedia Flash, shows do’s and don’ts for properly using a condom. An animated, living condom, with arms and eyes — dubbed “the condom […]

Gateway, Inc. is continuing its current campaign, debuting an ad designed to promote a new system to music lovers. The spot from the Poway, Calif.-based PC manufacturer shows Chairman and Chief Executive Ted Waitt driving down a desert highway in an 18-wheeler, with the company’s talking Holstein spokes-cow at his side. The cow whips out […]

Mainframe giant Unisys and Microsoft Corp. are debuting the first co-branded campaign supporting their joint ES7000 server solution. The yearlong “Way Out” effort, which begins with print ads on Friday, paints the ES7000 offering — combining high-end Unisys hardware with Microsoft’s Windows Datacenter — as a cost-saving alternative to UNIX-based systems. Targeting customers of Sun […]

Yahoo! could share users’ personal information with third parties in new ways, through updates to its privacy policy. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! said the changes to its privacy stance came about in an effort to integrate three previous policies. Prompted by federal legislation passed in recent years concerning information disclosure, Yahoo! began maintaining separate documents governing […]