Topic

Digital

  • Inventing the Circle

    There’s no shortage of companies trying different ways to get small local businesses to make the jump to online advertising. Google, Yahoo!, MSN and A9 are all out there beating the bushes to set up business profiles for local enterprises that don’t now have their own Web sites. And the Internet Yellow Pages directories are putting their sales forces into motion to convince Mom and Pop concerns that they, too, can have a prominent online presence with a minimal investment of time, if not of money. So what’s so special about Merchant Circle?

  • The Virtues of Getting Vertical

    As a term within the search industry,

  • Some Tips for Cleaning Up Clicks

    The measurement and eradication of click fraud

  • Live from Chicago: Rough Times ahead for Web-only Merchants

    Multichannel retailers and established retail brands with a Web presence may have an edge over pure-play e-commerce merchants as the online marketplace develops, according to Safa Rashtchy, managing director of investment firm Piper Jaffray.

  • Four Tactics for Search Optimization Success

    Natural search optimization (NSO)—also called search engine optimization, or SEO–is the process of fine-tuning or re-creating the layout, technical platform, and content of a Website to receive as much free visibility as possible

  • Allegis Trumps Rivals with All-Search Marketing

    These days, big brands are turning their attention—and their ad budgets, in growing numbers– to the power of search marketing, until now a traditional direct-response marketing tool. But staffing-services provider Allegis Group is reversing that trend. In a business category where its prime competitors rely heavily on branding advertising, Allegis is not only marketing exclusively on the Web but is using search marketing to build its own brand awareness among customers while blowing the dors off the competition.

  • Ice.com Seeks Blogging Gold

    Many marketers are treading gingerly around the notion of adding a blog to their Web site. Some are worried about the time and effort required to keep the blog active, while others are uncertain that consumers will show sufficient interest in the feature to make it useful. But don’t count online jewelry retailer Ice.com among the pussy-footers. The Montreal-based e-commerce site has not one but three blogs up and running and linked to its Web pages.

  • Google Looking for Smooth Landings

    As if online marketers didn’t have enough to think about, in early December 2005 Google snuck a lump of cyber-coal into their stockings in the form of an announcement that it was adding something new to its “Quality Score” measure: an evaluation of advertisers’ search ad landing pages.

  • More than 75% of All U.S. Adults Now Online: Poll

    An estimated 172 million adult consumers access the Internet, either through connections at home, the office, school, libraries or coffee shops, according to a new poll. The figure marks a 5% increase from last year’s level.

  • Internet Advertising Hits Record

    Internet advertising revenues hit a new record of $3.9 billion for the first quarter of 2006, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers announced today.