The way to a customer's heart is through empowerment. A customer who feels in control will be more likely to stay with a company longer, because the relationship is in his court. The financial services industry knows this, and many credit card issuers are using the Web to empower their customers. This streamlines business and engenders loyalty as a result.

It's not enough to have an aesthetically pleasing site; you've got to back it up with services customers need. Research firm Gomez recently published its Q3 2003 Internet Credit Card Scorecard of 18 issuers, showing a trend among financial institutions to think of the Web as a place to strengthen customer relationships, not to be used solely as an acquisition vehicle. Online statements are now available at 72 percent of the banks' Web sites, and the convenience of same-day payment processing is another top priority. Right now only 28 percent of those surveyed offer the service, but as customers demand efficient, automatic service, more banks can be expected to respond.

"Issuers, moreover, will continue to focus on self-service functionality such as balance transfers, credit limit increases and adding an authorized cardholder to keep customers loyal, happy and working through the lower cost Internet channel," says Chris Musto, VP of Research for Gomez. Individuals can drive the relationships as they see fit and each customer is in control of the interaction.

Here are some interesting stats to wrap up the week. comScore Media Metrix today announced the top 50 U.S. Internet properties for the month of August 2003, and as expected, the data shows that while the number of active Internet users increased slightly in August compared to July to 148.8 million unique users, the total amount of time spent online decreased by approximately 7% to 26.5 hours per visitor. comScore says that's likely because everyone was on vacation in August and also because the Northeast blackout kept people offline for a few days.

In August, there were six new entrants to the Top 50 Properties ranking. Leading virus protection providers Symantec and McAfee.com both broke into the top 50 in response to the SoBig and Blaster outbreak, with 29 million and 11 million unique visitors respectively. The traffic spikes driven by SoBig and Blaster were strong enough to be felt even at the category level in both the Computer Software and Technology - News categories, which grew faster than all other categories in August.

Not surprisingly, the start of the school year in August influenced a broad range of online information-seeking and shopping activities. Many leading Apparel retailers, such as Kohls, Foot Locker, Otto Gruppe (which owns Spiegel and Eddie Bauer), Gap and JCPenney, saw major increases in traffic levels as back-to-school shoppers browsed and bought new fall fashions.

Students' need for diverse technology products from MP3 players to digital cameras to PCs brought more consumers to Computer Hardware and Consumer Electronics sites, including big box retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City and direct marketers Gateway and Hewlett Packard. And families shopping for furniture and housewares at Sears, Ikea, Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel helped drive the Home Furnishings category up 28% from July.

Also, with the kick-off of the NFL season, NFL Internet Group saw its ranking rise from 114 in July to 49 in August.

By NAT IVES

VISITORS to The Wall Street Journal Online today will become the latest lab rats of online advertising, as the Web site starts grouping them into classes like "car buffs" and "consumer techies," all the better to serve them ads for Lexus or NetFlix wherever they may roam on the site.

Sending ads based on interests usually requires users to register personal information with the individual Web sites. But the Journal Online is joining a growing group of online publishers in adopting technology that can classify users merely by monitoring where they click.

The effort, the latest tentative step in the herky-jerky evolution of Internet advertising, contrasts with another increasingly popular approach: intrusive ads that unexpectedly jut into articles or cover most or even all of the screen.

Such intrusive ads have many fans among marketers. But there are worries that users will resent sites that permit ads to interrupt them too often, and that news sites will risk their credibility if the boundary between advertising and editorial content becomes too faint.

"It is not the way Web sites should be going because it's undermining the very nature of the Web," which offers instant gratification and usefulness, said Jakob Nielsen, a principal at the Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif., which researches user behavior online. With behavior-based ads, he said, "the challenge becomes, how good can we become at finding out what they want and need? If we do that, there's going to be no need for that disruptive full-screen advertising which says, `We don't care what you were doing, we're going to slam you with this thing.' "

Getting it wrong could halt a fledgling rebound in online ad spending that may finally be getting under way. A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau indicates that ad spending online rose to $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter from $1.5 billion in the previous quarter, the first quarter-over-quarter increase recorded by the bureau since 2000.

Another research group, the TNS Media Intelligence/CMR unit of Taylor Nelson Sofres, reported that Internet advertising totaled $1.5 billion in the first quarter of 2003, up from $1.4 billion in the same period last year.

Offering advertisers another way to slice up the audience was another way to fight for those ad dollars, said Randy Kilgore, vice president for advertising, marketing and sales at the Journal Online, part of Dow Jones.

In the past, auto marketers, for example, could try to reach readers shopping for cars by placing ads near relevant content, like the Journal Online's leasing calculator. "But I don't stop being into a car just because I left the leasing calculator page," Mr. Kilgore said.

To that end, visitors to various parts of the Journal Online will be placed in one of eight categories — car buffs, consumer techies, engaged investors, health enthusiasts, leisure-minded, mutual-fund aficionados, opinion leaders and travel seekers — or into a custom category designed at a marketer's request.

Behavior-based advertising should particularly appeal to sites that do not ask users for personal information to view their content, according to Omar Tawakol, vice president for product marketing and business development at Revenue Science in Bellevue, Wash., which developed the system being used by the Journal Online.

• The Journal Online becomes the latest Web publisher to pursue behavior-based advertising. Tacoda Systems in New York provides its Audience Management System to clients like CondéNet, part of the Condé Nast division of Advance Publications; Tribune Interactive, a network of newspaper sites owned by the Tribune Company; and USAToday.com, the Web site for USA Today, owned by Gannett. AlmondNet in New York also offers similar services. And The New York Times on the Web, part of The New York Times Company, in March introduced its own version of behavior-based advertising, developed internally.

For the Journal, behavior-based advertising also offers a way to seduce advertisers without giving over its pages to distracting animations.

"You won't see Bart Simpson running across our screen," Mr. Kilgore said, referring to the cartoons, sound effects and screen-takeovers that have captured marketers' imaginations in a very different way.

On Slate.com, for instance, a current ad for the Blue card from American Express expands beyond its boundaries, covering portions of articles with gray and blue blobs that eventually coalesce into a credit card as space-age music plays.

Visitors to the Web sites of ABC News, TV Guide and The New York Times last weekend also could see cavemen appear in full-screen, 15-second commercials promoting the Discovery Channel's "Walking with Cavemen" special, which first ran last night.

That these expansive ads, which can be stopped with a single click, are distracting is exactly the point, according to both supporters and detractors.

"One of the biggest problems is that those ads tend to have an unbelievable ability to interrupt whatever a person's doing at that point," said Charlene Li, principal analyst at the San Francisco office of Forrester Research.

"The thing I hear is that if it's interesting and funny, people won't mind as much," Ms. Li added. "And I say that's true, but most of the time they're not."

But backers argue that it provides a better canvas for ad agencies' creative executives than boxy, contained formats, including the larger-size ads also gaining ground.

"We're a television brand," said Susan Campbell, vice president for consumer marketing at the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Md., part of Discover Communications. "And our goal in the media that we choose is to try to be as dynamic and multidimensional as we can." The online campaign for "Walking With Cavemen" was created by itraffic in New York, part of Agency.com, and uses technology from Unicast.

Others said the ads might sometimes grate on users, but they were a price of free, quality financial information.

"I can't tell you that there aren't people who say, `I wish you wouldn't do it,' " said Larry Kramer, chairman and chief executive at CBS MarketWatch, a financial Web site that runs full-screen commercials before users reach its main page for the first time each day. "When I ask how else would you have us do it, they don't have a better answer."

Of course, aiming such ads more carefully might make them irritate less.

• Full-screen ads are first and foremost a nuisance, said Michael Cohen, 38, a New York disc jockey who was renting access to the Internet at a copy shop last week.

"It's not the worst thing in the world," Mr. Cohen said, when reminded that ad revenue supports free content online. "It depends on what it is. If it was for a new Lexus, I wouldn't be interested. If it was tickets to a Dylan concert, then I'd be interested."

By Larry Everling, Contributor

There’s a great radio station out of Annapolis, Md. - WRNR 103.1 FM - which plays John Hiatt, Beck, Steve Earle, Peter Gabriel, Lucinda Williams, with the occasional Stevie Ray Vaughan, Marshall Crenshaw or Jimmy Cliff gem thrown in for good measure. Every time I drive to Maryland’s Eastern Shore or Delaware beaches, I keep WRNR on until the static overwhelms any discernible music signal. Yes, I’m showing my age and my slightly obscure musical tastes, but I have a point.

Three of the eight FAQs on the WRNR Website (www.wrnr.com ) deal with increasing station signal strength or improving reception across the broader Washington, D.C. area. Clearly, demand is outstripping supply. WRNR thrives by realizing that sophisticated listeners don’t define themselves by the rigid formats established by traditional radio programming. Tell me into what category on the typical commercial radio dial should Elvis Costello, Wilco or even John Mayer fit?

The same ridiculous concept of narrowly defined classifications exists in corporate marketing organizations and it represents the primary obstacle stopping clients from fully exploiting the value of the online medium. Online behavioral marketing not only encompasses both Brand and Direct Response, but it is the bridge that connects the practices and all of the subtle distinctions of consumer action in between. However, right now, hundreds of companies are knee-deep in their 2004 advertising media planning, and nine out of 10 of these firms will divide their marketing department budgets and staffing into only two columns: Brand and Direct Response. You may know the categorization by other names such as Awareness and Sales Promotions or National and Local.

Think about it. Despite the explosion of media outlets and marketing vehicles in the past 10 years, the philosophy behind most client marketing department personnel and financial resource assignments hasn’t changed in decades. An overwhelming number of companies are in denial regarding evolving media consumption, shopping and buying habits. Changes in consumer conduct demand a blend of Brand and Direct Response strategies, and an official endorsement is needed, linking accountability between the two disciplines. Behavioral marketing is that link -- a means of matching messaging to a prospect or customer’s actions -- dynamically. That can only be accomplished in the online medium.

As ING's Tom Lynch discussed with iMedia, “Anyone arguing the DR vs. Brand argument is missing the point and the possibility of this medium.” But typical corporate marketing organizational and budget structures don’t grasp the hybrid role that online marketing plays. The overwhelming opinion is that there are no shades of gray -- it’s only black or white.

Consider the challenge facing most consumer package goods (CPG) firms. Their marketing budgets are divided neatly into “Brand” and “Sales Promotion.” But since we can’t buy salsa, beer or candy directly online from CPGs, the Websites and interactive media campaigns for these products are nebulously labeled “Brand.” The theory is that if the online marketing effort doesn’t result in a real-time sale, then it must be Brand by default.

Why should online purchase count as the only tangible “conversion” action for CPGs? In other words, why is Direct Response limited to being a last-100-yards, instant sales-closing catalyst? It is shocking to me that more CPGs haven’t harvested their Website traffic through cross-channel promotions and online coupon programs with their retail partners. Can’t an effective blend of Brand and Direct Response for CPGs, i.e. Behavioral Marketing, be achieved through capturing email addresses, which can then be used for future marketing campaigns featuring offers redeemable at traditional sales locations?

When forced to choose where online marketing belongs, the vast majority of corporate marketing management invariably falls back on the concept that is the simplest to understand -- Direct Response. In my opinion, this is the biggest roadblock to behavioral marketing and the online medium gaining more client dollars. Even in past iMedia interviews, marketers and agency representatives are always asked whether “Brand” effect is considered when using online marketing. This is to see whether we have evolved beyond the assumption that online marketing is used for Direct Response only. But where is the logic in lumping the online marketing budget in with local media advertising and direct mail just because it’s considered Direct Response/Sales Promotion, when online media is bought predominantly on a national basis and a company’s Website is globally accessible?

As a result of this paradox, there are also far too many marketing department heads who regard their own Websites with little more than ambivalence or only consider online marketing for last minute inclusion in cross-media deals. Worse, we are stuck with Direct Mail vice presidents, with only cocktail party knowledge of the Internet, who manage client online marketing budgets and are obsessed with an archaic reliance on click-through rates.

You may be saying: “Wow, you paint a pretty bleak picture. Can the appreciation of behavioral marketing in the online medium break through this organizational and budget hypocrisy?” Well fellow brethren, there is hope on the horizon.

In January, I spoke at a CBS SportsLine sales training event. I predicted that within the year, a household name corporation would anoint online marketing’s “Jackie Robinson” by handing over the reigns of its traditional marketing communications to its top online manager. I contend Rob Sherrell of Delta Air Lines has broken the barrier.

Why? Delta realized that its online presence eclipsed traditional media marketing with regard to sales influence. Naturally, Delta’s initial online advertising efforts concentrated on transaction promotion. After monitoring customer buying cycles and use of the Web, now the airline also deploys brand strategies in its Web marketing campaigns and partner marketing efforts. To quote Sherrell: “I think some lessons we’ve learned are just around how we impactfully reach our consumers through the way they live, work and play.”

And encouragement must be gleaned from the positive results generated by the IAB XMOS case study participants. For those who haven’t seen the Phase One presentations, well known brands such as Colgate, Unilever, McDonalds and Kleenex tested shifting advertising budget away from traditional media into online marketing. These firms found that increasing the budget allocation for online resulted in higher brand awareness, greater purchase intent and an increased return on investment versus maintaining the standard media advertising distribution status quo. The news just released this week that Phase Two IAB XMOS case studies have been commissioned featuring Ford, Astra Zeneca, Universal Home Video and Verisign certainly provides optimism that momentum is gaining for breaking online marketing out of its organizational silo.

But, we still have a long journey ahead. Rare is the corporation that has a centralized ownership of acquisition, retention and growth through the online medium. The companies that "get it" have advanced beyond the petty internal squabbles and have secured cross-department commitment to prioritize e-business initiatives. A client’s organizational angst in determining where online marketing belongs must be met with flexibility and the courage to do “what’s right for our customers,” not “what’s right for my marketing department.”

At past conferences, I’ve often heard the cries of “Don’t all of us here already get it?” Perhaps we should force senior corporate marketing executives to attend and learn from future online marketing industry events, with eyes taped open like Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange,” to ensure proper indoctrination. Just an idea.

Web sites for packaged foods and drinks make unlikely candidates for popular online destinations, since consumers cannot buy anything on the site and may not need much guidance on how to pour Planters Peanuts into their mouths or Ragu sauce onto their pasta.

But consumer packaged foods companies are drawing many more customers to their Web sites than in the past. And analysts say the sites are keeping those visitors in place long enough to etch their logos in the consumers' consciousness, to "brand" them, in packaged foods parlance. Certainly, the image of Mr. Peanut in a barbecue apron, using a Weber grill, makes at least a partial impression (www.candystand.com/planters/grill).

"They've found the recipe for success online," said Dawn Brozek, an analyst with Nielsen NetRatings, an Internet research company.

Ms. Brozek, who wrote a recent report on the online strategies of packaged foods companies, said that last month the top 10 sites of food and beverage makers attracted a total of 9.5 million visitors — only slightly fewer, for comparison's sake, than the number of visitors to the top 10 university sites. In July 2002, the top 10 food and beverage sites attracted just 5.4 million visitors.

A few years ago, most makers of packaged foods had "pretty dry corporate sites," Ms. Brozek said. "Now they've diversified into cooking content, games, contests, promotions."

And customers keep returning. Ms. Brozek said that roughly a third of the visitors return each month to sites like Kraft's Candystand.com — which promotes Lifesavers and Planters nuts, among other items, with games like Nut Vendor, in which the player assumes the role of a ballpark peanut hawker. Candystand, like other sites, will gather customers' e-mail addresses as they register for sweepstakes, then lure them back with offers of new recipes or products.

With a few notable single-product exceptions — like VanillaCoke.com and the M&M's site (mms.com) — the top food and beverage makers have migrated to what Ms. Brozek termed a "cohort" strategy, gathering several brands under one umbrella.

Take Kraft, which boasts 5 of the top 10 sites in the food and beverage category. For several years the company has followed a "brand portfolio" strategy, Kathleen Olvany-Riordan, the company's vice president for e-commerce, said. "Consumers don't wake up and say `What do I want to do today with Miracle Whip?' " Ms. Riordan said. "They do say, `What will I serve for lunch or dinner?' "

To that end, Kraftfoods.com, Kraft's flagship site, offers meal ideas, food news, instructional videos and recipes that are rated by the site's registered users, who tend to be homemakers. Much of Kraft's other fare is on the three game sites — Postopia.com, for cereals; Nabiscoworld.com for cookies and crackers; and Candystand for Lifesavers, Jell-O Pudding Bites and the like. They are meant to be playgrounds for the children who sway household buying decisions. Kraft says that the Web sites collect children's personal information only for purposes of awarding prizes offered on the sites and that it is not shared with other companies or used for Kraft's marketing purposes.

Ms. Riordan said that although the company always considered the Web a potentially important vehicle for advertising and customer loyalty, Kraft's enthusiasm for the medium grew stronger as the overall Internet audience increased. She noted that the Web now accounts for about 15 percent of the typical consumer's media consumption, a trend that continues to grow.

At the same time, she said Kraft has learned through experience what consumers want, and how to deliver it well — as in the most effective way to use the U.R.L., or Web address, in marketing. Instead of simply placing the U.R.L. in the tagline of a promotion, as in the early days, Ms. Riordan said, "now we'll use the U.R.L. and tie it to a consumer benefit" like the promise of new recipes, a sweepstakes prize or other initiatives.

That growing expertise, Ms. Riordan said, culminated most recently in a promotion to help roll out a new Oreo product, Uh-Oh! Oreo, which reverses the flavors of traditional Oreos, by making the cookies vanilla and the inner frosting chocolate. The promotion, involving online and offline advertising and promotional packaging, solicited consumer opinions on whether the company should continue to make the cookies (which, according to the advertisements, were originally the result of a manufacturing glitch).

Ms. Riordan said that by the time the promotion ended last month, more than 2.8 million people had voted and registered for the $10,000 sweepstakes. "Before the Internet, we might've gotten maybe half that many entries," she said.
Of course, the voters did more than simply enter their names in the sweepstakes. Participants gave Kraft their e-mail addresses — enabling the company to reach them with offers or news if the contestants are 13 or older — and they spent time surfing around the site and viewing what amounted to a continuous advertisement. "This was a much more efficient vehicle than ever before to immerse people in a new brand," she said.

Ms. Riordan said the Internet element of the promotion had helped increase sales of Uh-Oh! Oreos. "But whether it's by 2 percent or 20 or 80," she said, "we don't know."

Kraft has also used its brand sites to make good on its recent promises to help reduce obesity among consumers. On the Oreo site, for instance, the company offers information about its efforts to reduce trans fats in its cookies, as well as information about its low-fat Oreo cookies. And KraftFoods.com, Ms. Riordan said, features a "Healthy Living" section with a meal planner meant to encourage "healthy food ideas.".

Kraft, like other packaged food companies, is working to link online promotions to offline buying behavior, as more consumers use the Web and as the Internet continues to present itself as a cheap and potentially effective alternative to television, radio and print advertising. In Kraft's case, it is paying the audience research firm Nielsen NetRatings an undisclosed amount to survey its panel of 42,000 Internet users about their offline buying behavior.

"There's a long way to go," Ms. Riordan said, "but now we can at least start to quantify it."

Unilever, which makes food and household goods, was one of the earliest companies to devote a Web site to a particular consumer brand when it rolled out the Ragu Web site in April 1995. Since then, the company has grown more creative with its Web approach, said Steve Savino, vice president and general manager for Unilever's Ragu and Bertolli olive oil business units.
This month, for instance, Ragu began a promotion with the football commentator John Madden, calling on customers to rate the best of seven Ragu recipes and entering a contest to win a trip to the NFL All-Pro game in Hawaii, a new sport utility vehicle and $1,000 in spending money. "We're thinking a little bigger in terms of the grand prizes," Mr. Savino said.

The big thinking tends to stop short of selling goods directly to consumers online, not only because it would probably be unprofitable but because it could alienate the retailers who carry the products. The companies are getting better, though, at telling consumers where they can buy the products they are reading about.

Kraft introduced a product locator feature last spring that allows consumers to type in a brand and their ZIP code to find the nearest stores carrying the item. Other consumer companies have been slow to match that feature, analysts said, partly because it is a complex application to build and because most of a major packaged food maker's products are easily found in most grocery stores. But for for specialty dog foods, like Procter & Gamble's Eukanuba, which is sold only through specialty retailers and veterinarians, a locator service might prove valuable.

Manufacturers of other, higher-priced goods, typically are moving quickly toward product locator technologies, said Robert Wight, chief executive of Channel Intelligence, a company in Celebration, Fla., that provides online systems for Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, Palm and others. Those manufacturers, Mr. Wight said, will generate more than $3.5 billion this year by simply telling people where to buy their products.

"By the time you're on the product page you're pretty convinced you're going to buy," he said. "This just keeps you from straying to another brand."

Owen Gibson - The Guardian

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group has become the latest company to take decisive action to address plummeting single sales by pledging to sell new tracks online from as little as 60p and make songs available on the web weeks before their release in the shops.

Virgin has joined forces with OD2, the digital music company formed by former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, to make over 200,000 tracks from artists including Robbie Williams, Beyonce and the Stereophonics available for between 60p and 99p each.

Sir Richard, Virgin Group's chairman, said the new service would be "instrumental in putting the British single firmly on the road to recovery."

"Virgin has been a pioneer in the music industry since our earliest days, and low cost digital music is in the same tradition. We want to make it simple - and cheap - for music fans to sample and buy music digitally," he added.

The move follows a similar promise made earlier this year by EMI, which is also launching a new two track CD format which will retail at £1.99 in an effort to reinvigorate the stagnating singles chart.

The decline of the chart has been blamed on high CD prices and aggressive marketing techniques which have led to a high turnover of singles with disposable pop acts appearing in the top 10 one week and disappearing from the charts altogether the next.

Virgin will make tracks from the five major labels, all of which have signed deals with OD2, and make them available on the web on a pay-as-you-go basis. It will include exclusive versions and extra songs not available on the CD format of the single. It has also agreed a deal with BMG, owned by German media giant Bertelsmann, to feature exclusive tracks by its acts.

Among the artists expected to contribute tracks ahead of their official release date on CD are Sting, Starsailor, Texas and former S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens. Later this year, a separate chart for downloads will be launched and digital sales are expected to be incorporated into the official chart from early next year.

Through the new Virgin site, customers will be asked to buy bundles of credits, with tracks becoming cheaper if bought in bulk, allowing them to download tracks and "burn" them to CD.

For example, if a customer buys a £29.99 bundle of 50 credits, tracks will cost just 60p each - considerably cheaper than buying CD singles, which typically retail at £3.99. Alternatively, users can buy single tracks at 99p each.

Customers will also be able to hear a 30-second sample of any track before they buy, or listen to the whole song for just 1p before deciding whether or not to purchase.

"Virgin has developed a fantastic digital music offering that will appeal to all fans, regardless of how much they've got to spend. Its decision to offer an alternative to the subscription model shows that digital music can be in a number of different ways to suit consumer needs and buying patterns," said OD2 chief executive Charles Grimsdale.

The record industry is under pressure to halt the decline in sales caused by increased spending on a wider range of leisure products, internet piracy and the end of the boom cycle caused by the introduction of CDs in the 1980s.

Universal Music, the largest record company in the world and home to artists including Eminem, Elton John and U2, said today it would extend its plans to slash the price of CDs by up to a third to Europe if the campaign proved successful in the US.

Interest in launching legal download services has snowballed since the successful launch of Apple's iTunes service in the US, with AOL, Sony, Microsoft and Roxio's reborn Napster all due to launch new sites before the end of the year.

by Masha Geller

The Internet industry has long given up on the debate of whether the Web is a branding or a direct response medium and settled on the mutual understanding that it can serve both purposes rather successfully. Up until now that success has not been truly quantified, but the 2003 American Interactive Consumer Survey conducted by The Dieringer Research Group says the magic number is 50%.

The Internet influences offline purchases worth 50% more than the value of products sold directly online, according to the data.

"This data clearly contradicts those who argue that the Internet does not seriously affect brand perceptions," said Pam Renick, executive vice president of The Dieringer Research Group, a Milwaukee-based marketing information and consulting company. "We see overwhelming evidence that online content not only impacts brands but also drives traffic both to retail stores and to financial service branches and insurance agent offices."

Overall, consumers spent some $137.6 billion in goods and services purchased offline after first seeking online information.

Shoppers who made direct online purchases spent only $93.1 billion, a third less than Internet- influenced offline spending. Both figures are based on consumer self-reports of their spending in the twelve months prior to the survey.

In addition, one out of four U.S. consumers now says that online information changed their brand perceptions during the past year. According to the study, as a result of advertising and other product information found online, 45% of all online adults (25% of all U.S. consumers) say that their brand opinions have changed in one or more of ten common product categories covered by the survey. Brand opinions about airlines and lodging companies are most likely to be changed by online content, followed by consumer opinions about household products and clothing brands. In financial services and insurance, 29% of all consumers who conducted online product research prior to opening a new account or policy indicated their opinions of financial or insurance brands had changed.

"These findings prove that virtually every marketer can leverage the Internet in some way, depending on the product or service category," Renick said.

The annual study of multi-channel consumer behaviors is based on telephone interviews with 2,000 U.S. consumers.

Ad Demand Soars for Online and Cable

Heading into the fall of 2003 demand for ad inventory in all media has increased relative to the same point last year, according to nearly 500 media planners and buyers surveyed in recent weeks by MediaPost and InsightExpress.

Two out of five (39%) of the respondents who were surveyed online by InsightExpress in late August said their underlying demand for ad media has increased either somewhat or greatly, while 43% said it remained the even with last year. Only 18% said they had experienced a decrease in demand.

The findings are consistent with other recent positive indicators for the advertising economy that have emerged in recent weeks. First half 2003 trending data from ad tracking firms Nielsen Monitor-Plus and TNS Media Intelligence/CMR and from various ad trade associations have shown healthier than expected gains and analysts and economists speaking at last week's Television Bureau of Advertising forecasting conference suggested that momentum would continue to build, at least through 2004.

But some media appear to be poised for significantly greater growth than others, especially online and cable TV. More than half of the agency executives polled by MediaPost and InsightExpress said their demand for online and cable TV ad inventory had increased either greatly or somewhat (see table below).

The next strongest demand gains were experienced by radio and outdoor media. Late last week, the outdoor ad industry released figures showing a 5.3% rate of growth during the first half of 2003, a revision upward from its earlier predictions.

Print media continue to lag in terms of an upswing in advertising demand. Less than a third of media planners and buyers said they have experienced an increase in demand for magazine ad space. Only 27% said their demand for newspaper ad space has expanded, the same percentage that said it has decreased.

Interestingly, network TV, the medium that continues to enjoy the highest sell-out positions and the highest rates of ad cost increases, ranks only ahead of newspapers in terms of the relative change in demand from media planners and buyers.