Recent Direct Marketing News

Karen Wickre, Senior Manager of Corporate Communications at Google will share secrets about Blogging @ Google today, July 29, 2010, at 1:00pm EDT / 10:00am PDT. There is still time to register for the free webcast and webinar, which is sponsored by Connected Marketing Week.

Elixir Interactive has shared a very unusual online reputation management study. What is unusual is that the interactive marketing agency, which provides online reputation management and search engine optimization services, and it's well-respected CEO and President, Fionn Downhill, are the targets of a mean-spirited and scurrilous attack.

If you haven't seen him yet, check out the YouTube video of Isaiah Mustafa asking ladies, "Should your man smell like an Old Spice man?" As of today, the video has 11,740,466 views -- making it the most viewed video on YouTube during the past month.

According to comScore, social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8 percent of all women online visiting a social networking site in May 2010 versus 69.7 percent of men. This is just one of the highlights of a global report released today by comScore on women's online usage entitled, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet.

According to new research from Econsultancy, companies worldwide are increasing their investment in site search because they want to improve the experience for website users and increase site usage and sales.

Yahoo Japan -- an independent entity from Yahoo -- has decided to forgo the Bing transition and will be using Google search results, Reuters announced today.

Most reporters are focused on the United States Copyright Office declaration that it is it legal to unlock or 'jailbreak' a mobile device from the manufacturer and network provider from which it was purchased from, which permits users to install unapproved software under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) fair use provisions. The request was made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) particularly as it applies to AT&T and Apple's iPhone Software License agreement.

The advertising industry is launching its own PR campaign by way of setting up an Institute for Advertising Ethics. The sector has always had a negative image and the likes of the "Mad Men" series are certainly surfing that tide to... sell. With the market staging a robust recovery the industry is planning ahead and wants to tweak its reputation. Here's how.

The rumor is growing fast. Now the New York Post has it that Google could launch its search-related music store as early as this holiday season, i.e. November-December.

AOL is currently gauging the offers of several companies to power its search as its $700 million-a-year deal with Google is set to expire in December. Whether it renews its agreement with Google or switches to another search company, AOL is likely to sign in its partner for the few years to come by September, according to various reports.

When AOL is in the news, it means business... CEO Tim Armstrong said advertising would be AOL's primary source of revenues in his turnaround plan for the company. As such, AOL already demonstrated its willingness to leave non-viable operations behind by selling its failing and ailing social site Bebo for a reported $10 million. Now it's building a new future, starting with the launch of an innovative political ads platforms and at the same time looking for its future head of music operations.

NBC Universal (NBCU), the media and entertainment company, has launched its own advertising platform UAP to serve its own network of owned and operated sites, Mediaweek reported, quoting company executives.

Microsoft's Greg Nelson and Yahoo's Mark Morrissey recently gave interviews to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. Nelson and Morrissey are in charge of a two-year effort to coordinate the massive search and online advertising partnership that their companies struck last year. According to Swisher, their job "essentially is the search equivalent of herding cats."

This past week, Matt Bailey, the president and founder of SiteLogic, Cindy Krum, the Chief Executive Officer of Rank-Mobile, and I taught half a dozen of the modules in the Rutgers Mini-MBA: Digital Marketing certificate program. Rutgers incorporated "cutting-edge digital technology" into our teaching approach for this program - supplying all participants with their own free Apple iPad tablet, containing the pre-loaded program materials.

According to Glenn Blain of The New York Daily News, Governor David Paterson of New York has signed into law a measure giving New York City greater power to crack down on so-called "illegal hotels." However, Dennis Schaal of Tnooz reports that Paterson issued a statement saying that he, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the bill's sponsor support an amendment to the bill which would mean the law would not go into effect until May 1, 2011, giving property owners time to adjust to its provisions.