We’ve received some very gratifying comments about the DM News print edition in the past week.

After reading our December 11 edition, the legendary speaker, analyst and DM guru Don Libey wrote us as follows:

“I received the paper edition yesterday and had a wonderful afternoon of reading. You have done it again! You have surpassed everything else. The Outlook 2007 is filled with excellent thinking and many fresh and important viewpoints. Thank you for your fine publication – and publishing – and for cutting-edge reporting, not only content, but format. The quality of the publication is unsurpassed.

Despite rising postal rates, higher raw materials costs and an increasing number of alternative channels, marketers continue to seek out the return on investment benefits of direct mail, spending $60.6 billion on the channel in 2006– a 7.5 percent increase over 2005– according to a white paper released by the Winterberry Group. 

The white paper, “Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail and the Impact on Production Service Providers 2006,

The Federal Trade Commission yesterday announced the latest developments in its Project FAL$E HOPE$, a federal and state law enforcement sweep targeting bogus business opportunities and work-at-home scams.
In addition to new and developing cases of law enforcement actions by the FTC, the report holds as new education materials for advertising sales staff on screening ads. Essentially these guidelines follow the adage: ‘Anything that looks too good to be true, probably is.’
A document called, “Ads for Business Opportunities: How to Detect Deception,

The number of business-to-business vertical search engines on the Internet increased by at least 26 percent in just the past six months, according to a new white paper from BTB marketing agency Slack Barshinger and SearchChannel.

According to new research in the white paper and provided by Outsell Inc., total revenues from BTB search engines is growing at a 15 percent annual rate and will reach $1 billion in three years. In addition, information users report a 32 percent failure rate on general search engines such as Yahoo or Google.

Industries in which professionals face the greatest search failure rates include advertising and public relations, computers and software, electronics and semiconductors and telecommunications.

Specialized search engines can improve results while reducing time spent on failed searches, according to the white paper.

Media companies have taken a leading role in developing specialized search sites, according to vertical applications services provider SearchChannel, Oak Brook, IL. Of the 38 Web sites it tracked, media companies represent half the entries. SearchChannel has built 10 BTB search engines since spring 2006 and has at least half a dozen in the works for 2007.

Niche-oriented search tools for BTB marketers serve two distinct audiences: professionals who need information fast and those who need to efficiently target their online advertising dollars to the right audience, according to Slack Barshinger, Chicago. 

The paper, “The Emerging Opportunity in Vertical Search,“ is available for download at both companies’ Web sites: www.searchchannel.biz and www.slackbarshinger.com/verticalsearch.

Posted by Chantal Todé

Google Inc. has finally developed a radio advertising system called Google Audio Ads, which many have been anticipating. The company has initiated a testing period, allowing customers to buy ads through the new online ad-buying system.
Since the acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting earlier this year, Google has been concentrating hard on integrating the dMarc advertising platform into Google AdWords.
Google Audio Ads provides advertisers with an online interface for creating and launching radio campaigns. Marketers will be able to target customers by location, station type, day of the week, and time of day.
Google claims that its Audio Ad platform will bring efficiency, accountability, and enhanced ROI to radio advertising by providing advertisers with an online interface for creating and launching radio campaigns.
Once the radio ads run, marketers can then view online reports that tell exactly when the ad played.

-Posted by Giselle Ambramovich

CHICAGO — At SES Chicago, Incisive Media promoted Rebecca Lieb to editor-in-chief of the ClickZ Network.
Ms. Lieb has been with ClickZ since January, 2001, is respected in the interactive marketing space. She is often invited to speak at industry events and conferences worldwide, including ad:tech, Search Engine Strategies and the CMO Council Summits.
With this new role, Rebecca will play a huge role in shaping the future editorial direction of Search Engine Watch following Danny Sullivan’s departure from the site at the end of November.
A sister site to ClickZ, Search Engine Watch is already a part of The ClickZ Network.
She has had quite some experience in this fast moving industry, with positions like executive marketing and communications positions at strategic e-services consultancies, including Siegel & Gale.
She worked in the same capacity for global entertainment and media companies including Universal Television & Networks Group and Bertelsmann’s German network, RTL Television.
She has written on media for numerous publications, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and spent five years as Variety’s Berlin-based German/Eastern European bureau chief.
She is also a member of the graduate faculty at New York University’s Center for Publishing, where she also serves on the Electronic Publishing Advisory Group.
– Posted by Giselle Abramovich

Search engines have accounted for 25.79 percent of visits going to the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending December 2.

Direct competitive traffic, from shopping and classifieds Web sites, made up for 25.72 percent of upstream visits.

E-mail services were at 9.6 percent and rewards and directories, including comparison shopping sites, were at 5.63 percent in the same period.

It was no surprise that Google was in the lead as the search engine sending the most visits to shopping and classifieds sites, accounting for 16.04 percent of visits for the week ending December 2, 2006.

Yahoo came in at second with 4.84 percent and MSN Search at 2.22 percent.

The shopping and classifieds sub-categories receiving the largest percentage of traffic from search engines for the week ending December 2, 2006 were intimate apparel and accessories, with 36.02 percent of upstream traffic from search.

Net communities and chat Web sites, which includes social networking Web sites such as MySpace, are playing a much larger role in driving retail traffic than a year ago. They account for 6.16 percent for the week ending December 2, 2006.

MySpace alone accounted for 2.07 percent of visits to shopping and classifieds Web sites for this past week and was the eighth most popular Web site sending visits to the shopping and classifieds category.

–Posted by Giselle Abramovich

CHICAGO – In order to be found by search engines, it is important to use the right keywords. However, it is also important to write in a way that will appeal to Internet users, as that is a good way to try and convert site
visitors into customers.

Doing both is a winning combination, said panelists at SES Chicfago’s “Writing for Search Engines

The Keynote presentation at SES Chicago was a conversation between Danny Sullivan, of Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies and Jason McCabe Calacanis, general manager at Netscape.

About a year ago, Jason sold his Weblogs Inc. blog network to AOL and since then he has been reviving the Netscape brand.

He has transformed it into a social news site. Some call he new Netscape a clone of Digg.

Mr. McCabe talked about rewarding bloggers with links rather than cash for finding stories.

During the dot-com boom, he was active in New York’s Silicon Alley community.

In 1996 he began producing a publication known as the Silicon Alley Reporter. It was a 16-page photocopied newsletter and its popularity grew, as it expanded into a 300-page magazine, with a sister publication called the Digital Coast Reporter for the West Coast.

Calacanis’s socializing and networking earned him a nickname as the “yearbook editor” of the Silicon Alley community.

– Posted by Giselle Abramovich

Effective today, WebTrends has acquired ClickShift.

The ClickShift platform is designed to optimize across channels for portfolio-based optimization. The platform finds significant combinations fast with minimal experimentation. It is an adapted DOE model to significantly reduce the time needed to analyze and deploy changes back to the search channels and it also automatically adapts to changing external factors such as ad costs and positions.

ClickShift’s CEO John Rodkin, vice presidenrt of sales Jeff Goodman andvice president of marketing, Eddie Smith have been selected to continue their carreers at WebTrends.

Through this acquisition, WebTrends hopes to measure and optimize for success, profitably acquire new customers and strengthen customer relationships.

ClickShift’s platform was the first true breakthrough in intelligent, automated campaign management, Mr. Rodkin said.

It is basically profit-based optimization for your entire portfolio. It is real-time, integrated reporting across all the major search networks, which exponentially expands your ability to profitably grow your business.

It allows marketers to monitor, measure, and automatically adjust allocation and spend to profitably scale traffic acquisition.

All of a campaign’s monitoring, analysis, and performance tuning is automatically handled by WebTrends Dynamic Search, the former ClickShift platform.

ShopNBC, Allure, Snap, Bell, Smart Bargains, Clear Ink, and Intervoice are customers who have already experienced success from this platform.

“We have been able to drive sales, improve our contribution margin and expand our search efforts significantly. As a result, impressions, click-through and revenue have all grown significantly,