Chief Marketer Staff

• Listline e-Newsletter 05/17/07

  Subscribers to various independent business magazines are combined on
  this file. The count is 116,270. Those listed include subscribers to the
  Ann Arbor Business Journal, Colorado Biz, In Business Las Vegas, Indiana
  Business, Oakland Business Journal and Rochester Business Journal, among
  others.

• Listline e-Newsletter 05/16/07

  The Custom Select list group has been expanded to include a file
  identifying more than 1.1 million car, van, truck and SUV owners. These
  men (62% of those listed) and women purchased extended warranties after
  their vehicles’ original factory warranties expired.

• Times Article Cites Compiler, Bank in Article on Scam Artists

  Scam artists who focused their efforts on senior citizens were aided by at least one bank, Wachovia, and by list compiler infoUSA, according to a front-page article in Sunday’s New York Times.

• Digital

  Microsoft Pays Big Money for aQuantive

  Microsoft announced Friday that it will join the online ad stampede by purchasing aQuantive for $6 billion in cash, the largest acquisition in the company’s history.

• Digital

  Fair Isaac Prelim Report: 15% of Billed Clicks Could Be Bogus

  Fair Isaac Corp., the company that detects credit fraud for financial institutions, announced Friday that preliminary findings from its study of click fraud in pay-per-click advertising suggest that bogus clicks can reach 10% to 15% of billed traffic.

• Email

  Blue Sky Factory Buys RSS Service

  E-mail service provider Blue Sky Factory announced it has acquired RSSFWD, a company that forwards RSS content feeds via e-mail technology.

• Agencies

  Loose Cannon: First They Came For The Smokers

  There’s a tossup regarding which I detest more, cigarette smoke or censorship. Because of this, recent efforts to classify any movie that depicts smoking with an R rating put me in a bit of a bind.

  I’m going with my anti-censorship sympathies for two reasons. First, a society that tolerates free expression should put minimal fetters on writers and directors.

  Second, censors tend to have rapacious appetites. Once started, who knows what the next target of their pique will be?

  A leaked draft document from the Motion Pictures Association of America Inc. answers that question.

• Agencies

  Anheuser-Busch Yanks Spykes Beverage After Complaints

  About one week after 27 attorneys general warned Anheuser-Busch over its marketing practices, the brewer has pulled the plug on its Spykes flavored malt beverage.

• Verizon CMO John Stratton Behind Agency Consolidation

  Verizon Communications’ surprise consolidation of its estimated $2.5 billion marketing account puts its Verizon Wireless division at the fore of the parent company’s marketing strategy.

• Agencies

  Advocates Prompt FTC to Investigate Digital Food Marketing

  Consumer groups are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate digital food and beverage marketing of junk foods to children after a new report revealed that the technology is contributing to poor nutrition and obesity.