1. Guest Column
The Changing Landscape of
Online Advertising

2. MarketPlace
Trend Indicator: June 2001
User studies: The Netherlands are leading the pack in Europe
Trends: "banner tracking" for the Netherlands
Prognosis: More for Your Money

3. DoubleClick NewsDesk
DoubleClick to buy MessageMedia
Double Click buys Sabela Technology Assets

4. Online Marketing Know-How
E-Marketing: First Steps Towards a Code of Honour

5. Smalltalk
EMS Brings Colour to SMS
Surfing During Work Time is Addictive




President DoubleClick
Global Media

The Changing Landscape of
Online Advertising

Welcome to the launch issue of DoubleClick's new monthly newsletter. The timing is no coincidence. The face of marketing has changed fundamentally with the growth of the Internet - and most dramatically in the last 6 months. This change has brought with it an exciting shift in the balance of power in favour of senior executives in traditional marketing organizations. Their broad visions as well as their diverse service and product needs lay a new set of demands and opportunities at the doorstep of companies in the online arena. And incidentally, those traditional marketers are well grounded in the core principles of making marketing work.

Whilst our initial expectations as an industry were built around the role of the Internet as an advertising medium, today we must recognize the unique opportunities that it brings to bear as a diverse and robust suite of broad-based marketing tools.

There is no stronger indication for the long term prospect of the online medium, than the increasing guardianship afforded it today by experienced "traditional" marketers.

Overshadowed in the early days by those "bright young things" (with more money and control over advertising budgets than their marketing experience may have justified), online clients today are more sophisticated than ever, more broad-based in their objectives, more senior in their capacities - and more demanding. Their needs from online go well beyond simply advertising on the web; rather, they have expectations for marketing tools that will deliver results across the range of their business objectives. Tools - like e-mail, promotions, remarketing systems and customer relationship management - are the essential bundling ingredients that companies like DoubleClick can provide to support the needs of our marketing customers.

Traditional marketers are already playing heavily in the online space but, importantly, their intention is for even greater escalation in this channel, both in terms of how much they spend and what they do. They will spend greater shares of their media budgets and more of their overall marketing budgets online. They will seek advanced online tools for managing customer acquisition and retention, for trade marketing, promotions and discounting, loyalty programs and research, customer service and focus groups. The tools facilitated via the Internet will permeate every facet of the marketing mix and change forever what we know and how we do things today.

In short, the marketing fraternity is ready and poised to unlock the broader applications of the web as a marketing tool. To serve their needs, we need as an industry to start speaking their language more fluently and effectively. We must speak "marketing solutions" and not "ad sales". We must own accountability for a more "fact-based" approach to our medium, both in terms of pre-sales media planning and post-sales campaign performance.

On March 26th 2000, the New York Times reported, "The biggest marketers in the world, like Coca Cola, General Motors and Proctor & Gamble say they are finding ever more ways to use the internet to sell their products. The problem for websites like Yahoo and hundreds of others, is that little of the marketers' money involves advertising on websites." What a wake-up call for many in our industry! However, I also believe it is just the beginning of prime time for those that recognize and leverage the broad applications of the Internet to help make marketing work better.

Gone are the days of viewing the Internet as simply a content or advertising vehicle. This far undervalues the role it has to play - and underserves the needs of our marketing clients. Today companies like DoubleClick have a wide range of capabilities already in place to service the needs of marketers. From Ad Effectiveness Research tools, to Remarketing Systems and E-mail Solutions - these tools and services go well beyond simple "ad sales" and provide relevant and effective integrated marketing solutions for marketers.

These solutions will guide marketers in their quest for branding and response effects,
for leveraging effective creative solutions, for succeeding in their targeting and reach objectives, for building customer relationships, engendering loyalty and ultimately, for realizing an effective and successful return on their marketing investments.

We at DoubleClick remain committed to investing resources in ongoing efforts to build and develop our industry. We welcome the opportunity to teach, learn and share experiences with publishers, marketers, advertisers and agencies around the world to help make marketing work better. In that spirit we launch this newsletter.

We welcome your thoughts and contributions. Please share them with us and other readers
of this newsletter. Reach us via e-mail at newsletter@doubleclicknews.com

I hope you enjoy this newsletter.

 


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2. MarketPlace

 
Trend Indicator: June 2001

• Brave new online world: By the year 2005, a total of one billion people are expected to surf the net world-wide. This is the result of a US study by IDC. The volume of e-commerce will grow to $5 trillion (£3,6 trillion) [$354 billion in 2000 254,9 billion)] world-wide. And Europe is going to overtake the US with regard to Internet usage.

• Content is king - if the quality is right. US market researchers at Information Resource found out, however, that customers of consumer goods often do not think that this is the case. According to the researchers, customers would prefer fewer online features like chats, games or lifestyle elements and would rather have more simple Web offers with product information and, above all, with feedback features.


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User studies: The Netherlands are leading the pack in Europe

 

This is a new record: 4.5 million people in the Netherlands were surfing the Internet in May 2001. On average, every user spent a total of 7 hours on the Web and visited 24 different sites in 15 sessions. Those are the results of Nielsen's net ratings for May. Conditions for Internet access in the Netherlands are excellent, rendering them leaders in Europe. This is true both for private households and for Internet access in companies. Euromedia recently reported that the number of private and business Internet users is balanced.

According to a study from eMarketer, the number of Dutch Web users will continue to rise during the coming years. Compared to other market research companies, eMarketer takes a rather conservative approach. Look at the market data for the Netherlands for 2000, for example. Of all analysts, eMarketer stated the lowest figure with their 4 million Internet users. Taylor Nelson Sofres offered the highest number with 5.6 million.

According to analysts, the Internet boom in the Netherlands is based on good education. 78% of the Dutch speak English as their second foreign language, which enables them to easily surf the Web, where most of the material is in English.
E-mailing and online banking are among the preferred online activities in the Netherlands. In the area of online banking, the Dutch are leading all other European countries. 40% of the Internet users in the Netherlands regularly do their banking online. This number is higher than the corresponding figures of all other European countries. In the area of e commerce, the Netherlands are also leading the pack. According to eMarketer, people in the Netherlands order books and CDs online with a frequency that has no match in Europe. Among the most popular Web activities are downloading free software and searching information (product information, vacation information, educational material and documents, sports and leisure information). One out of four Dutch Internet users read newspaper articles or look for jobs online.

For more information go to:
http://www.iht.com/articles/22714.html
http://www.emarketer.com/analysis/eeurope/20010116_netherlands.html
http://209.249.142.22/hot_off_the_net.asp?country=europe#netherlands


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Trends: "banner tracking" for the Netherlands

 

Who showed what on what site? "Banner tracking" makes the search for a particular banner or campaign easy. French provider NetCrawling offers a service called LemonAD that carries out daily searches on more than 2,500 European Web sites for new online advertising campaigns. For the Netherlands alone, the service observes 290 Web sites from national and international companies. The data is collected in the LemonAD database and then analyzed statistically.

In April, the following picture could be drawn for the Netherlands:

Online advertising market

There were a total of 1,888 campaigns from 1,228 advertisers with 3,688 banners. These figures mean that on average there were 1.5 campaigns per advertiser and 2.0 banners per campaign.
Industries
70% of the advertisers are spread across ten industries. Most of the customers are related to editorial Web sites, e commerce and automation. One out of three advertisers put their banners on an editorial Web site.

 


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Prognosis: More For Your Money

 

Prices for interactive advertising will continue to fall during the next six months according to a recent prognosis by research company Jupiter MMXI. This development is due to a surplus of advertising space on many websites.

During the last year, prices for online advertising have fallen by a considerable 30 percent. In June 2000, advertisers had to pay $25.5 (€30) for 1,000 page impressions; the current corresponding price is only $17 (€20). Market researchers at Jupiter MMXI say that European marketers in some cases have only filled 40% of their advertising space. Advertisers have a dominant position in the market and thus influence price dynamics. This means that they increasingly expect prices to be negotiated on the basis of actual results. In other words, advertisers no longer want to pay for actual results, such as the number of achieved clicks, registrations or transactions.

Jupiter MMXI estimates the surplus of unsold advertising slots on the Internet to represent a value of between $51 million and $59 million (€60 million and €70 million) each month.
These numbers put buyers of media space in an ever stronger position during negotiations.
The study also shows that 25% of traditional advertisers think that the online medium is still too expensive, despite falling prices. However, market researchers also emphasise the fact that lower prices do not necessarily mean lower advertising expenditures.

For more information go to:
http://jupitermmxi.com/press/releases/20010523.jsp


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3. DoubleClick NewsDesk

 

DoubleClick to buy MessageMedia, Inc.

DoubleClick and MessageMedia, Inc., the e-mail marketing company, have reached an agreement on the purchase of MessageMedia. DoubleClick presented a $41 million 29,5 million) take-over offer to the shareholders of MessageMedia. With this purchase, DoubleClick has further improved its position as the world-wide market leader in e-mail marketing.

MessageMedia's e-mail marketing system is based on a variety of e-mail marketing solutions and services, including the M³Platform, a full-service solution in ASP mode, which in its software versions has already won awards. M³Platform operates in a way similar to that of DARTmail or FloNetwork. In the short-term future, DoubleClick plans to keep the M³Platform; only gradually will they combine the platform with the DARTmail and FloNetwork technologies.

MessageMedia currently has more than 310 customers and sends more than 100 million
e-mails per month. Among their customers are companies such as Cisco, Columbia House, Fleet Boston Financial and Starwood Hotels. After the take-over, DoubleClick will send more than 700 million e-mails per month. According to reports, one of DoubleClick's main objectives is to leverage both the structures and the experience MessageMedia has in Europe.

Within only six months, DoubleClick has made the leap to the top of e-mail marketing providers by incorporating the recently bought FloNetwork. The success story is based on DARTmail, the e-mail technology, and FloNetwork's infrastructure.

For more information go to:
http://www.doubleclick.net/us/corporate/presskit/press-releases.asp?asp_object_1=&press%5Frelease%5Fid=2522


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DoubleClick buys Sabela Technology Assets

In May, DoubleClick announced it's purchase of the intellectual property assets of Sabela Media, Inc. from 24/7 Media, Inc. Sydney-based Sabela had been part of 24/7 Media, a direct competitor on the Australian market , since its acquisition by 24/7 Media in January 2000 for $75 million (£54 million).
Sabela has been a leading player in Australia in ad serving, tracking and analysis , and had more than 150 customers at the time of the purchase. Over time, DoubleClick will offer Sabela Media's clients the option of migrating to its DART (Dynamic Advertising Reporting and Targeting) system or its AdServer platform. In the past two months alone , more than 55 of Sabela's customers have already migrated to DoubleClick's systems, including BMC Media, OzEmail and i-level. DoubleClick's DART systems will now generate almost 5 billion impressions per quarter on behalf of these customers.


For more information go to:
http://www.doubleclick.net/us/corporate/presskit/press-releases.asp?asp_object_1=&press%5Frelease%5Fid=2525


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4. Online Marketing Know-How

E-Marketing: First Steps Towards a Code of Honour

Credibility is at stake. Millions of e-mails reach customers and Internet users without their consent. As a result, advertisers' credibility is deteriorating and ad mails are considered "spam". So it is time to come up with some guidelines and firm rules about ethical handling of e-mail marketing. Among the driving forces pursuing these goals are the Engineering Task Force (ITEF) and national institutions like the Deutsche Multimedia Verband (DMMV, German Multimedia Association).

As a rule, e-mails are only acceptable if the addressee expressly asked for them. Transparency is a must when handling customer data. Responsible e-mail marketing is based exclusively on processes that include a request and a confirmation, so-called "confirmed opt-ins". At the same time, recipients have to be informed in advance and in an understandable manner, with regard to the amount of their stored information, its purpose and its further usage.

Commonly accepted recommendations for e-Marketing as follows:

Each individual company can determine the design of the opt-in process. After the user has registered with an e-mail distribution list, he immediately receives an e-mail confirmation that prompts him to choose one of two options. The first option is to choose to have his name removed from the list immediately (single opt-in). The second option is to confirm his registration by answering the e-mail he just received (double opt-in). This is a safe way, also legally speaking, to prove that a newsletter or other e-mail information was actually requested by a user. Technically speaking, this double opt-in feature does not pose any additional problems. Most of the modern list servers already include the feature. Whenever users register with a mailing list, the process is triggered immediately and automatically.

For more information go to:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3098.txt?number=3098
http://www.werbeformen.de/werbeformen/sonder/a.shtml


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5. Smalltalk

 

EMS Brings Colour to SMS

EMS brings colour, sound and animation effects to SMS. EMS means Enhanced Messaging Services and is aimed at implementing various new features into the text-based SMS. Cell phone users can now add images, sounds and animation effects to their texts. Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens are co-operating in the further development of the new standard. EMS also means that the new SMS features will work regardless of the manufacturer of a cell phone. The brand of a particular cell phone will not be important any longer. The first cell phones with EMS capabilities will enter the market at the end of June.

For more information go to:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url=/newsticker/data/dz-29.05.01-000/default.shtml&words=Ems

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Surfing During Work Time is Addictive

The work just keeps piling up on the office desks. No wonder! Employees are surfing the Internet again during their work time! Web@Work asked 800 employees in Great Britain, Italy, France and Germany about their private Internet usage during office hours. 90 percent of the people surveyed said that surfing is addictive and 41 percent (!) admitted that they spend about three of their weekly work hours on the Internet for private purposes. The employees use the Web for all kinds of purposes. 52% of the people surveyed book their vacation during work hours, 42% use the Internet to improve their knowledge and education, 28% go shopping in virtual stores. And 27% of the people asked said they follow sports events on the Web.

Source: e-market


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For further information about this newsletter contact Bjorn Koetz

kmedia Bjorn Koetz