A big AOL
cross-promotion for 'Fat Actress'
Kirstie Alley must be a lot
funnier now that’s she’s overweight than she was during her skinnier
"Veronica's Closet" days. Why else is Showtime is shelling out
big bucks to get viewers to tune in to her new comedy, “Fat Actress?”
The network has scheduled a multimillion-dollar ad campaign including ads
in Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and billboards in major cities. But the
biggest push is coming online. For the first time, people can visit the
Yahoo TV Web site and watch an entire episode through streaming video. The
complete first episode of “Fat Actress” will be showing for free at
the same time it premieres on Showtime March 7. The show will be available
to watch at 10 p.m. for the three days after the premiere as well. Alley
co-created the series with Brenda Hampton about an overweight performer
looking for love and work in a fickle industry. Showtime has ordered seven
half-hours of the comedy.
Study: Three-quarters of e-shoppers use search
Just as
traditional shoppers browse about a store before making a purchase, online
shoppers perform searches well in advance of purchasing according to a new
study. Yesterday DoubleClick released the results of a study based on 1.5
million internet panelists conducted along with comScore Networks.
According to the study, about half of all online shoppers researched
products via a search engine prior to purchasing, and three-fourths of
travel shoppers did so. In the travel category, 64.7 percent of buyers'
final searches occurred at least two weeks before the purchase.
Approximately one out of every two online purchases was preceded by
research on a search engine, and brand name searches were far less common
than multiple generic queries.
'Berry sweet: WSJ makes its free PDA debut
Commuters will no longer have to juggle their
Blackberries and copies of the Wall Street Journal at the same time. The
Journal has teamed with Outercurve Technologies, a wireless company, to
offer The Wall Street Journal Online for the BlackBerry. The service made
its debut yesterday. Customers with Outercurve’s InfoEdge On-Demand
information-delivery platform will receive the service for free until
April 30 as an introductory offer. The Blackberry version of The Journal
is continually updated with news and opinion pages. Users can customize
the service to receive headline lists based on criteria they specify and
get alerts on up-to-the minute news on selected public companies. The
paper also recently launched an edition for cell phones, The Wall Street
Journal Mobile.
Why
online auction buyers want to tar-tar Zarzar
There hasn’t been such an interest in obscure
regions of the West since folks thought they might strike it rich. But
this is far from a gold rush. San Diego-based Zarzar Land, a land
speculator, bought 8,500 acres of land in remote areas of West Texas and
has begun selling 10- and 20-acre plots on eBay. The company has sold more
than 400 plots, sight unseen, to buyers as far away as France and Hawaii.
Some land is going for less than $200 an acre. While some unsatisfied
buyers already have complained to state officials about the undeveloped
land that is frequented only by deer, mountain lions and drug smugglers,
Zarzar says it has not defrauded anyone. The company is marketing the land
with statements such as “utilities are available.” But it doesn’t
mention that it costs big bucks to get a water or electricity line to the
remote areas. Nearby Valentine Independent School District gets has only
53 students and covers 900 square miles.
|
