Q&As

USA Today’s Gary Stoller writes that “business travelers may be overpaying for their hotel rooms by a half-billion dollars a year, the result of mistakes in billing.” Hard to believe? Yes, but there it is, in two separate studies.

Generation Y, those folks born between 1981 and 2001, have long had a unique identity as purchase influencers for high-ticket items, such as vehicles and vacations. Now the group is coming into its own as a spending force.

Senior marketers executives may want accountability in their advertising. But they don’t feel that they know how to get it. Those are among the findings of a new survey by Marketing Management Analytics, the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research.

Granted, it was an out-and-out sales pitch for Yahoo. But Usama Fayyad, chief data officer for the online giant, awed database professionals with the statistics he presented this week.

Someone with an Indian accent answers the phone, and says, “Thank you for calling SBC DSL service, my name is Joe, how can I help you?” Now I have many friends and associates in this country of Indian descent and I have NEVER met one named Joe, Tom, Bill or Ted.

Now that Bernie Ebbers has drawn a 25-year sentence, I can report that I, too, was victimized by Worldcom. It started early in 2002 when my wife and I switched our landline service to MCI/Worldcom.

Target Stores will turn New York City’s Rockefeller Center into a vertical catwalk for a p.r.-driven fashion show next week. Target’s July 27 stunt will feature 15 acrobats (in harnesses) walking down nine floors of Rockefeller Center in clothing from …

Blimpie International is out with a new sweepstakes targeting racing enthusiasts, offering a grand-prize trip to the Homestead-Miami Speedway. The QSR launched the sweepstakes to generate buzz around its new Champion Combo meal, a choice of a six- or …

Ameriquest Mortgage Co. is launching an online sweepstakes today that will send five consumers to meet The Rolling Stones and see them perform live, while helping the mortgage company generate new leads. As presenting sponsor of the U.S. leg of The …

E-mail authentication is a place to start fighting spam, but don’t stop there. That was the main takeaway from a summit meeting of some 500 e-mail service providers (ESPs), ISPs, e-mail tech vendors and e-marketers held in New York on Tuesday