News

Vitacall LLC (http://www.vitacall.com ), a Boulder, Colorado based Web 2.0 telephony company has just introduced cutting edge Click-to-Call services to its suite of products. Click-to-Call services allow companies to place links on their websites or banner ads, enabling customers to immediately call and be connected to their businesses. Data from these calls can then be analyzed to provide a more robust understanding of their customers including how a customer found the company, how long they communicated on the call, and even personal data about the customer.

A recent Forrester research study has shown a significant growth in the Click-to-Call industry over the last three years, and it’s easy to understand why. The study found higher conversion rate of Click-to-Call users over non-users, and a 143% return on investment of advertising dollars. Research also indicated that Click-to-Call customers were better informed than toll free callers, and asked more detailed questions.
“We feel that Vitacall’s Click-to-Call service will rapidly replace 800 numbers online due to their affordability and the additional customer information they provide.” said Vitacall’s CEO, Tim Rohde. “By offering the most competitive Click-to Call rates in the industry and the sophistication needed for back-end integration and analytics, we can address the needs of small businesses and enterprises alike. We’re particularly excited about the potential this has for pay-for-performance marketers. Now they can include phone calls in their mix of pay-per-click campaign services.”

Click-to-Call services are expected to grow rapidly in the near future, as familiarity with the technology grows. “It’s rare to find a cutting edge technology that can be implemented with so little cost – it should be a
“no brainer” for most service oriented businesses” said Fred Portner, CFO of Envision Equity Partners. “Anytime I can pay less money per customer contact and retrieve more information about those contact sessions, I’m going to jump at the opportunity. And my developers looked at the standards-based interface and actually smiled at me.”

Oodle (http://www.oodle.com), a whole new way to shop classifieds, and the New York Post (http://www.nypost.com/) today announced a partnership to revamp the online classifieds offering on nypost.com. New York Post users will now be able to search New York’s largest collection of online classified listings in tickets, pets, merchandise and services as well as post their own ads for free. The New York Post, with more than 4 million users in a typical month, is the oldest and fastest growing continuously published daily newspaper in the United States. Oodle is the largest and most comprehensive online classifieds marketplace in the nation.

Velocity, the London-based technology marketing consultancy, has reinvented itself as “the B2B technology marketing agency for the Interweb era”.

The company announced its new offices, new website, new Client Services Director and new digital marketing practice in one fell swoop today.

The new agency grows out of a successful consultancy specialising in technology marketing, with clients including BT Global Services, Gartner, Portrait Software, Clearswift and a range of early stage technology companies.

“We’re still consulting-led,” says Stan Woods, Velocity Marketing Director, “But we’ve really invested in the digital side of the business – where B2B marketers are lagging behind their consumer colleagues.”

The new agency offers three main services:

Strategic Consulting – engagements focused on positioning, messaging, branding and core stories.

Marketing Acceleration Programs – integrated online and offline campaigns around goals such as thought leadership, lead generation and selling to existing customers.

Digital Engagement – a digital marketing practice that brings together search marketing, email campaigns, online PR, blogging, social media, affiliate programs, web analytics and video screencasting.

“We’re stealing the digital pages form the consumer marketing playbook,” says Roger Warner, Velocity’s new Client Services Director, “But we’re re-engineering tactics to make them more relevant and effective in a B2B context.”

Warner, formerly of IBM and Airbus Industries, joined Velocity in September from open source content management player, Squiz, where he gained deep digital marketing experience.

The agency also publishes a new blog on B2B and technology marketing, available at http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/our-blog/

For more information:

Website: http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk

Blog: http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/our-blog/

White Papers: http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/papers/

The fast growing Ambimark, Inc. has successfully launched a free boat classified website www.oceanlist.com. OceanList.com offers free services for individuals looking to find or sell a boat or a yacht. The idea behind Oceanlist.com is to provide all sellers and buyers with powerful, convenient and high-quality classified services online.

The website offers free online ads for individuals looking to buy all types of boats including fishing boats, sail yachts, performance boats, ski boats, personal watercrafts and more.

OceanList is easy to use and accessible to all. In fact, visitors can access the entire site inventory 24/7 and lookup a boat by type, make and location. Furthermore, the search results can be customized for specific buying/selling requirements such as year, boat size and price.

Boat seller can sign up for a free account and place a photo ad in less than 5 minutes. The boat or yacht will be immediately available for OceanList.com visitors — potential buyers and can be easily updated or edited by boat owners.

Ambimark is driving targeted traffic to OceanList.com directly via top and second tier search engines, national classifieds, world online marketplaces, and internet affiliate partners. National marketing campaign will be launched right before the 2008 boating season. This will result in high numbers of potential buyers and thus more sales for Oceanlist.com private sellers and dealers.

Boat dealers and yacht brokers can benefit from OceanList.com traffic by advertising their inventory via convenient dealer account interface specifically created for managing multiple listings.

www.Oceanlist.com was created to serve unique needs of private sellers, boat dealers and buyers in the online boat marketplace. The website’s database is constantly growing and attracting thousands of visitors looking to sell or buy a boat in the USA and around the world.

Brent Kozlowski, founder and chief executive officer of www.MyDayRegistry.com, announced the official launch of his new interactive website and unique gift service today. Privately owned and operated, the innovative International Day Registry allows people to buy a day for any special occasion.

The products International Day Registry provides have been exclusively developed to either offer a unique and original gift to someone, or to simply commemorate a particular day for any special occasion. Offering title and ownership rights to any calendar date; past, present or future, the owner has the option to register by state, country or internationally, in order to claim their unique day in a particular registry. Upon purchase, the registered owner will receive a professional and uniquely framed certificate to commemorate their particular day.

They will also receive a lifetime membership to the International Day Registry website. On this website they will have a profile on an interactive calendar that includes an about my day section, options to upload pictures and video and include a section for people to leave comments regarding that day.

“Encompassing everything the particular day in time means to them or someone special,” said Kozlowski, “this has been specially designed for any holiday, special occasion or event in which anyone may consider.”

About International Day Registry:

International Day Registry was founded to offer both an innovative and affordable product along with online social networking. Offering title and ownership rights to any calendar date; past, present or future, the owner has the option to register by state, country or internationally, in order to claim their unique day in a particular registry. Included is a lifetime membership to the social network on www.MyDateRegistry.com, displaying an interactive calendar profile. Such a combination of elements makes for an attractive solution to the consumers who want to find a unique and interesting way to memorialize a place in time.

Advertising dollars at U.S. print newspapers continued to fall in the third quarter, declining by 7.4 percent, according the latest industry report.

The Newspaper Association of America said Tuesday that total advertising dollars spent on print advertising fell 9 percent to $10.1 billion from the same period last year, led by a 17 percent tumble in classified advertising.

Online advertising now accounts for 7.1 percent of overall newspaper ad spending, up from 5.4 percent in the third quarter of 2006. The industry group said this “demonstrated the importance of newspaper Web site advertising.”

Within the print advertising category in the third quarter, classified ad spending dropped 17 percent. Real estate advertising fell 24.4 percent to $1 billion as the nation experiences a steep decline in home sales fueled by a crisis in the subprime mortgage lending sector.

“At the same time, broader economic issues are impacting our industry the same way they are impacting other media the continued fallout from declines in the housing market clearly affects real estate, recruitment and retail advertising,” NAA President and CEO John Sturn said. “Newspaper companies continue to take aggressive measures to prepare for the future during a period of economic challenges for the industry.”

Classified advertising, once considered the major source of income for newspapers experienced a big drop drop. Within classified ads, job ads dropped 20 percent to $882.4 million and automotive ads were down 18 percent to $796.6 million.

Online advertising at newspapers climbed 21 percent to $773 million in the latest period compared with a year ago.

Independent digital marketing agency Steak Media walked away as winners at the prestigious Interactive Marketing and Advertising Awards.

Hosted and organised by NMA and Marketing Week, there were over 320 entries competing for top position in 21 categories. The awards were established four years ago to recognise and celebrate the most effective examples of marketing and advertising using the internet, mobile and interactive TV.

Steak Media beat 3 other market leading companies including Mediacom, i-Level and Bigmouthmedia in the Media Agency of the Year category. Steak was also named as a finalist in the category for Best Use of Search Marketing for their work on swiftcover.com

The 19 judges commented “they had watched Steak grow from nothing to a great agency that was leading the market and doing phenomenally well with an intelligent and impressive use of PPC”

Earlier in the week, Steak picked up the award for Best High Growth Business at the Daily Mail Enterprising Young Brits awards. The event recognises young people who have turned their ideas into reality and was attended by Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling.

Oliver Bishop, co-founder and CEO of Steak Media said “It is fantastic that Steak, an agency only founded in 2005, has been awarded with both Media Agency of the Year and Best High Growth Business in the same week. It is down to the sheer hard work, support and dedication our team at Steak have put in and the excellent client relationships we have developed. The awards recognise how Steak has grown and transformed itself to be a leading player in the market.”

Information on the awards:

http://www.imaawards.co.uk

http://www.makeyourmark.org.uk/get_involved/enterprising_young_brits/2007_finalists

www.steakmedia.co.uk

About Steak Media

Steak Media is an expert digital media agency specialising in search engine marketing (SEM); media planning and buying; and other integrated online marketing strategies. Launched in February 2005, the company has been publicly recognized for the results it delivers for its clients. It ranked as the 2nd largest independent search agency in this year’s NMA Marketing Services Guide (2007). With over 50 years experience amongst them, the senior management team has a unique pedigree comprising expertise in both the digital media and SEM realms. The company founders were pioneers in paid search in Europe, having made their mark at Lycos Europe, one of the earliest search engines, and Espotting Media, one of the most successful dotcoms of recent years. Steak Media services a broad range of blue-chip clients, focussing on the highly competitive Internet finance, travel and retail sectors. Clients include: British Gas, Time Out, FCUK, JJB Sports and Swiftcover.com

A group of 11 major U.S. newspaper companies representing 282 newspapers have formed an alliance with Zillow.com to extend their classified ads to the popular real estate site.

Under the agreement, local advertisers who run print and online “for sale” and open-house ads with the newspapers will also have the option to share listings on Zillow, which has 1.5 million registered users. Newspapers will also be able to incorporate Zillow features into their own sites, including the company’s “Zestimates,” or estimated valuations of homes nationwide.

Participating newspaper publishers so far include Hearst Newspapers, Journal Register Company, Lee Enterprises and MediaNews Group. Large market newspapers owned among the 11 newspaper companies include the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News. More newspaper publishers are expected to join the group before it launches in the first half of 2008.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it’s expected to include an ad revenue-sharing arrangement between Zillow and its newspaper partners.

The Zillow partnership comes a year after many of the same publishers forged an alliance with Yahoo–focused on giving newspapers the ability to place local help-wanted ads on the Internet portal’s HotJobs career site. The Yahoo group is now up to 21 newspaper companies and nearly 400 newspapers, most recently adding The New York Daily News.

Coast Digital have launched a free 23-page publication designed to help businesses get the most out of paid search. With the continuing growth in spend around pay per click – following a 52% increase last year – this timely publication identifies advertising techniques which can really help accelerate sales and profits.

Written in conjunction with Coast Digital’s team of search marketing specialists and with commentary from Mark McCann of Google, the advisory guide contains 12 top strategies for success.

For example, find out the right way to set up a successful campaign; leverage the tools provided by Google; chose the right keywords and bidding strategies; and advice on how to beat your competitors.

Packed with hints, tips and insights from Coast Digital clients, the publication is an invaluable tool for any business seeking to unlock the phenomenal potential of pay per click.

Ashley Fletcher, Search Marketing Specialist at Coast Digital comments:

“We recognise that the paid search market is becoming more complex and the competition for keywords ever more intense. This guide was written to help businesses assess their existing PPC activities and understand the potential of fully optimised campaigns. We hope that users will find it a very useful and informative resource.”

www.coastdigital.co.uk

Press Release

NEW YORK, November 12, 2007 – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Price Waterhouse Coopers LLP (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues exceeded $5.2 billion for the third quarter of 2007, representing yet another historic high for a quarter and a $1.1 billion increase, or 25.3 percent, over Q3 2006. The results, published in the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, are nearly 3 percent higher than Q2 2007, itself the last record-setting quarter. All three quarters in 2007 have set new highs—Q1 at $4.9 billion, Q2 at $5.1 billion, and now Q3 at $5.2 billon. Revenues for the first nine months of 2007 totaled $15.2 billion, up nearly 26 percent over the $12.1 billion recorded during the first nine months of 2006.

“The continued robust growth of the industry indicates that marketers increasingly understand and appreciate the benefits of interactive advertising,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “Marketers large and small have come to accept digital media as the fulcrum of any marketing strategy.”

“Internet advertising revenues are on an annual run-rate exceeding $20 billion, further demonstrating the industry has truly come into its own,” said Peter Petrusky, director, Entertainment, Media & Communications Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers. “The emergence of new platforms, including broadband video, rich Internet applications, mobile, and social media promise to deliver new benefits for consumers, and create exciting new venues for marketers to realize value in digital media.”

“The results of the survey continue to underscore the value that interactive advertising brings to the marketplace, as marketers and agencies build on established guidelines and best practices to control costs and maximize returns from their growing interactive budgets,” added David Silverman, partner, Assurance, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the “IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report” was started by the IAB in 1996, and represents data from all companies that report meaningful online advertising revenues. The results are considered the most accurate measurement of interactive advertising revenues because the data is compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertising on the Internet. The survey includes data concerning online advertising revenues from Web sites, commercial online services, free e-mail providers, and all other companies selling online advertising.

First and third quarter revenue reports are estimates, with the actual figures being released along with second and fourth quarter data, respectively. PwC does not audit the information and provides no opinion or other form of assurance with respect to the information.

The IAB sponsors the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, which is conducted independently by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The full report is issued twice yearly for full and half-year data, and top-line quarterly estimates are issued for the first and third quarters.

About PricewaterhouseCoopers:
PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com) provides industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to build public trust and enhance value for its clients and their stakeholders. More than 140,000 people in 149 countries across our network share their thinking, experience and solutions to develop fresh perspectives and practical advice.

“PricewaterhouseCoopers” refers to the network of member firms of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity.

About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 300 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the continuing growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates the advertising industry about interactive advertising.

The New York Daily News, the nation’s fifth largest newspaper, said Friday it has joined Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)’s classified advertising network of newspapers, becoming the latest publisher to partner with others in trying to grab a bigger slice of the online ad market.

The Daily News becomes the largest newspaper to join Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium, launched in Novemberl 2006. The Internet portal distributes its HotJobs recruitment listings through its partners’ local listings, which are also distributed through the consortium’s network. Yahoo hopes to eventually expand the deal to broaden the type of advertising distributed.

The Daily News also said it would use Yahoo’s online advertising tools to distribute targeted display ads through the portal’s network. “Our partnership with Yahoo will allow us to provide additional opportunities to our advertisers, to job seekers and to all of our users,” Marc Kramer, chief executive of the Daily News, said in a statement.

JTLB Media, a New York-based technology company offering cellular marketing solutions, is now offering cellular advertising solutions to publications and advertising agencies.

Because print revenue is down 10-30% across the board and has been dropping steadily since 2002, agencies and publications can increase revenue exponentially and increase their bottom line by having the ability to offer the addition of a cellular component to print and classified ads to their clients. Agencies can now reach up to 200 million wireless subscribers — potential customers — anywhere they are and offer their advertisers the ability to give out significantly more information through text message and wireless technology.

Through JTLB Media’s wireless and cellular capabilities, a publication’s readers can now get much more information and see up to five photos on their cell phone as they read the publication.

“This is a new way to get leads that were never available before,” states Dean Steinman, president, JTLB Media. “It’s the latest way for publications and agencies to brand themselves and obtain definite trackable results.”

If a consumer is looking at a classified ad and sees a house for sale, they can now see photos, floor plans and most of the important information right on their cell phone by using a special text code that they see in that ad. This technology in conjunction with print can change the way information is obtained by the consumer.

In addition, JTLB Media’s Cellular Technology can be used for autos, motorcycles, restaurants, contractors, vacation destinations, goods for sale and more.

There are no out-of-pocket or up front costs to publications and the cellular component is priced as low as $3.00 per ad.

“It’s a win-win situation for publications (who can offer this to about 80% of their advertisers) and advertisers; they can now offer their customers additional exposure, new branding, positioning with a technology flair, and the ability to get their name, product or service out to prospects/customers to them wherever they are. Plus publications will be branded on each text message/cellular link as to significantly increase their exposure,” continues Steinman.

JTLB media is presently seeking strategic technology partnerships with media companies throughout the United States.

About JTLB Media

JTLB Media is a leading company that offers cellular marketing solutions. It allows publications, industries and companies to provide clients with information via text messages and cellular marketing, including price, size, pictures, etc. For more information go to: www.jtlbmedia.com