While far from solved, there is hope on the horizon for email deliverability problems. Authentication methods are more and more becoming the norm. (Discussion by ClickZ Kevin Newcomb is here.) They're expected to be followed later by increased use of reputation methods. Email marketing gurus Loren MacDonald and Kirill Popov discuss the trends and the distinction here. They describe the two major methods thus:

"Where authentication methods like SIDF and DKIM verify that a sender is who they say they are, reputation services take that sender's identity and check it against a database of their sending practices, checking for things like bounce rates, unsubscribe practices and user complaints."

In the article, the authors state that authentication is up 60% in the last year. Also, that:

"35 percent of all Internet e-mail is authenticated using SenderID framework (SIDF), a protocol identified with Microsoft." Also, that "10 percent of all Internet e-mai... Read More →

I keep promising myself I'm going to write a post full of bad news. Something full of gloom and doom, or at least wonder and worry. (That seems to have worked well in journalism for decades, and of course we're always looking for ways to increase readership.) Unfortunately, events just keep refusing to cooperate. Pew has just released a report that contains the results of another of their excellent surveys. In it the author, Mary Madden, discusses the continuing rise in Internet and broadband use and the increase in online shopping confidence.

"[O]ur latest survey, fielded February 15 � April 6, 2006 shows that fully 73% of respondents (about 147 million adults) are Internet users, up from 66% (about 133 million adults) in our January 2005 survey. And the share of Americans who have broadband connections at home has now reached 42% (about 84 million), up from 29% (about 59 million) in January 2005."

When I think about the fact that broadband users tend to spend more online, I find it hard to be sad. Here's another interesting tidbit: "91% of adults living in ... Read More →

Internet marketing is booming in the U.S., but not only there. Even the (for a while, relatively) weak Japanese economy is improving with Internet marketing as both cause and beneficiary. Japan has the third largest Internet population in the world. (Second, if you discount the heavily censored Chinese market.) Estimates put the number in the neighborhood of 73 million individuals. Not only numerous, the Japanese are highly industrialized, strong on financial services and technology oriented. Most consumer electronics products see their introduction there prior to the rest of the world. (And the Japanese consumers often pay a significant premium for such items.) Brazil is coming on strong as well. With a working population over 123 million, 14 million of whom use the Internet regularly, Brazil is the largest Internet market in Latin America.

RevenueScience reports on a study that shows a 55.6% drop in people who frequntly deleted their computer's cookies. "Bolstering these findings were strong indications that cookie deletion is on a significant downward trend. When asked how often they delete cookies form their hard drives, only 8 percent answered �very frequently� compared to 18 percent in a 2004 survey; while 24 percent indicated they �never� delete cookies�more than double the 11 percent from the previous survey." Read the article at: http://www.revenuescience.com/news_releasesdetail.asp?prID=060427 And more than DOUBLE the people (from 2004) said that they NEVER delete their cookies...... Read More →

A third of the way through, 2006 is shaping up to be a banner(less) year. New forms of advertising, far surpassing the effectiveness of those of yesteryear are growing in popularity. (Ok, so we work in a medium where yesteryear is really only the year before, like yesterday is the day before today, but still...) Blogads are becoming more popular and more lucrative, as 75,000 new blogs per day are coming into being. (I'm still looking for figures on those that become inactive daily.) RSS ads � despite continuing controversy about when, whether, or if it should largely replace email � are rising, too. And podcasts are marching along, with monetization via accompanying ads growing all the time. So now Microsoft is buying Massive, the in... Read More →

We've been getting swamped with e-mails asking about the new book "High Performance Affiliate Marketing" by Jeremy Palmer. Jeremy earned over $1 MILLION through just affiliate marketing and was won Commission Junction's Horizon Award for Innovation... If you want to read what I think about it, visit: High Performance Affiliate Marketing Just so you know, Jeremy reveals some neat things: - Free keyword research tools to use - Different kinds of websites to make - Gives you templates you can model after - Even shows you a few of his sites! The full review... High Performance Affiliate Marketing... Read More →

With the judge agreeing to Google's proposed settlement, click fraud is back in the news again. (It left for a while?) In essence, Google has agreed to allot up to $90 million in credits for advertisers who apply, claiming unreimbursed "invalid clicks". (Google uses the term "invalid clicks" rather than "fraudulent clicks" on the grounds that automatically detecting a click for which an advertiser should not be charged is one thing, while "it's practically impossible to 'prove' that an impression or click was caused by deliberate deception." I think they overstate the case, but they have a point.) To date, one of the difficulties surrounding the whole subject is the fact that Google, Yahoo!, and others won't release figures showing the real size of the problem. (I can't say I entirely blame them here, either. But that's a distraction I'll go into another day.) Thanks to a... Read More →

According to an In-Stat study, as many as 25 million may be using their mobile phones as mobile wallets by 2011. Previous attempts to get users to shop-by-phone in a new way didn't fare well.

(For those under 30, shopping by phone � i.e. buying from real paper catalogs used to be enormously popular. It still is, though it gets a lot less press in the 1st century AG (after-Google founding) Era. For example, one major retailer in the Northwest U.S. employs over 300 customer service reps just to take orders. Even for them, though, online purchases represent a third of sales these days.)

But with color-screen phones that have excellent resolution, along with a Google or Yahoo! Local, etc, the technology to make it work just might be there this time.

Most users resist the idea primarily due to added fees for mobile shopping services. But telecom vendors and merchants will soon get wise to the idea that those fees are foolish and unnecessary. Take a cut off the back end from the merchant and sales will rise to more than cover both parties' costs.

At the same time, Read More →

Just when we were beginning to wonder if we were making it up... eMarketer has provided data suggesting BT (Behavioral Targeting) is even more worthwhile than we claimed. (It's good to be wrong in the right way....) The research gurus estimate that "marketers will spend about $1.2 billion on behavioral targeted online advertising in 2006. And in only two years, behavioral targeting spending will surpass the $2 billion mark." They also say why:

1. Behavioral targeting helps marketers get better results from fewer impressions. 2. Publishers like the fact that behavioral targeting delivers more revenue from lesser pages. 3. Users tend to find ads targeted by their actions to be more relevant to their needs. (Source: "Online Ad Targeting: Engaging The Audience" by David Hallerman.)

With technology assistance growing to help marketers identify who is buying and why, BT is becoming more than just a buzzword. It's becoming an important way to increase conversions. And with Internet adve... Read More →

Marketers are always looking for new ways to attract attention. That's their job after all. With attention comes sales. (Not every look leads to a purchase, of course, but few sales come without at least some prior nudge.) But attention-getting techniques are limited, especially online. Once you've done the obvious, what next? Two options are techniques called Behavioral Targeting and Demographic Analysis. As with any marketing technique, there are debates about how effective either is. One study suggests only 18% of users respond to behavioral targeting, with demographic coming in at 28%. Compared to 62% who are more likely to purchase based on a contextual ad, that doesn't seem like much. That may well be the case, but 18% or 28% represent significant chunks of users and after you've done contextual, then what? Demographic techniques � using zip codes, income levels, gender, and other data � to target users is also helpful. However, the effectiveness varies with all those criteria ... Read More →