Christopher Saunders

A San Antiono, Texas-based weight loss company is joining the chorus of voices criticizing paid search listings, filing suit against Overture, AltaVista, FindWhat.com and Kanoodle. The diet firm, Mark Nutritionals, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in San Antonio, and seeks at least $10 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages […]

For the past two weeks, cryptic television spots, billboards and print ads have been touting something called mLife — but just what mLife actually is has been a closely-kept secret. Until now. As it turns out, the multi-million dollar campaign, which debuted in a mysterious and vaguely philosophical spot during the Golden Globe Awards, is […]

Web ad player 24/7 Real Media has sold its broadband and professional services unit to the group’s management, furthering the company’s lengthy efforts to shore up operations. The New York-based ad network and technology firm, created through the October 2001 merger of 24/7 Media and Real Media, said its IMAKE subsidiary would be bought out […]

Privacy organizations TRUSTe and ePrivacy Group are set to unveil a seal program designed to help improve consumer confidence in e-mail marketing. The groups’ “Trusted Sender” program, currently in a trial phase, will offer a seal of certification for commercial e-mail messages. Like the online privacy seal program administered by nonprofit TRUSTe, the Trusted Sender […]

Like Godzilla and Rodan teaming up to tackle MechaGodzilla, Japanese consumer electronics titan Sony Corp. and ad agency giant Dentsu plan to jointly take on the largely untapped and untried broadband advertising market. Under an agreement between the two, Dentsu, the world’s largest advertising agency, will pay about $13 million for a 40 percent stake […]

Consumer foods giants Pepsi-Cola and Mars, Inc. are looking to foster greater interaction with consumers through high-profile campaigns centering around online voting. Purchase, N.Y.-based Pepsi, a unit of PepsiCo, has teamed up once more with Yahoo! and pop princess-turned-pitchwoman Britney Spears, in an effort tied into Sunday’s Super Bowl. The beverage maker purchased space for […]

Paid search listings firm Overture is gaining an important distribution channel in Europe, thanks to a new agreement with AOL Europe. Through the arrangement, Overture’s London-based European unit will syndicate its listings across AOL Europe’s systems and Web sites in Germany, France and the U.K. The two companies said they plan to have Overture’s listings […]

Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, has taken the wraps off its new, much-touted version of the paper’s Web site, complete with several glitches. The redesign of the nearly six-year-old WSJ.com is aimed at fetching more money from advertisers, and from subscribers. The enhancements, on which Dow Jones spent about $28 […]

More consumers are combining online and offline channels to do their shopping, according to a recent survey conducted by DoubleClick, Beyond Interactive and Greenfield Online. The survey, performed during the 2001-2002 holiday season, found that 35 percent of about 3,800 consumers shopped using a combination of catalogs, in-store visits, and the Internet. Of that group, […]

Rich media advertising firm Unicast is debuting a more robust version of its interstitial ad format, in an effort to attract more advertising dollars online. The New York-based company updated its Superstitial product to use a 300-kilobyte file size. The format’s earlier version had a 100k limit, that allowed advertisers to create ads of 20 […]

AOL Time Warner is making moves to capture the attention of the younger crowd on behalf of advertisers, this week signing deals to promote teen pop music sensations *NSYNC, and teen actors/entrepreneurs Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Through the arrangements, *NSYNC will appear across AOL’s America Online service, and its related Web properties, CompuServe and Netscape.com. […]

Online marketing technology firm Responsys aims to help clients better understand and market to their customers, through the purchase of Web metrics firm NetAcumen. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The purchase combines Palo Alto, Calif.-based Responsys’ e-mail and Web site marketing services with Burlingame, Calif.-based NetAcumen’s traffic analytics practice. As a result […]