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Leading internet portal Yahoo will soon begin targeting ads to specific geographic locations. Yahoo will use Akamai Technologies’ EdgeScape targeting technology to zero in on users’ whereabouts, based on the IP addresses of the computers they’re using. In theory, the IP address, which is tied to the location of the user’s internet service provider, can indicate a web surfer’s state or even city. But determining location from an IP address is not quite so exact. For example, big ISPs like America Online tend to route all users through their headquarters—Dulles, Va., in AOL’s case. Akamai officials say that their technology accurately determines what country a user is in 97 percent of the time, and down to the city 80 percent of the time. If it works as Yahoo hopes, smaller local and regional businesses will have a reason to advertise on the portal.
Jupiter: Health retail sites are tops for week
Perhaps because people are gearing up for the Fourth of July and buying gallons of sun block, retail sites devoted to health care saw the biggest increase in traffic for the week ending June 24, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. Traffic to the retail-health care category increased 118.8 percent over the previous week, to 477,000 average daily unique visitors. Along those lines, traffic to pharmacy web sites went up 25.4 percent, the third biggest increase, to 355,000 average daily unique visitors. Straight-up health sites rounded out the top-10, with an 8.7 percent increase in traffic to 1.97 million daily unique visitors. Yet the push in online health wasn’t big enough to drive health retail sites to the top of retail sites in general. The top retail site for the week was wireless technology company X10, the company with a pervasive pop-under ad campaign. Among health sites, WebMD led the pack, with an audience reach of 13.1 percent and a total of nine million unique visitors. EDiets came in second, with an audience reach of 2.3 percent and 1.6 million total unique visitors.
Bank One scraps WingspanBank.com
The first online bank in the United States is being tossed onto the dead dot.com scrap heap. Bank One Corp. says that its WingspanBank.com venture was simply too expensive to fly. Bank One started the internet-only bank two years ago and sank $150 million into it to get it off the ground. But the site kept losing money. Bank One concluded that the Wingspan brand was especially costly to maintain since it also runs a Bank One-branded online bank, bankone.com. Wingspan attracted 226,000 customers, about half the number projected. Those customers will be absorbed by bankone.com, which has many more customers--700,000, to be precise. The 100 people who worked for Wingspan will also be folded into Bank One, which is the fifth-biggest bank-holding company in the U.S. Industry observers say that Wingspan’s demise signifies the virtual impossibility of starting internet pure-play banks, especially when those banks are new brands.
Napster’s strict filter turns away users
Not so long ago, song-swapping service Napster was synonymous with rebellion and irreverence. Now the company evokes difference terms, like “compliance.” Since courts ruled that Napster facilitated copyright piracy, the company has become so good at filtering out copyrighted files that would-be song swappers have all but abandoned the service, according to research company Webnoize. The average Napster user now shares 1.5 music files, off from a high of 220 in February. About 320,000 people were simultaneously using Napster on Wednesday, down from February’s high of 1.57 million concurrent users. On Thursday, Napster took its new role of copyright enforcer a step further by deactivating all old versions of its software. Users who logged on saw a message informing them they would not be able to share files at all unless they downloaded a new version.
Study: 6 of 10 emailers missend messages
Hit “send” in haste, repent at leisure. Fully 60 percent of web users in the U.K. have sent confidential messages to the wrong person, according to a survey carried out by Fox’s Biscuits, a British cookie company. The survey uncovered a few notable misfired messages. One software executive claims that he dispatched company-wide salary data to his entire staff. To hide his blunder, he triggered the fire alarm and personally erased the message from all computers once the building was empty. Many respondents reported having misfired emails containing sexual details. The survey also found that 70 percent of people have used the excuse “I never got your email” to shirk responsibilities. A majority of respondents confessed to emailing coworkers who sit within ten feet of their desk. Fox’s survey was part of its new ad campaign, the thrust of which is that people have lost touch with one another thanks to their over-dependence on technology. The survey of 500 U.K. adults in 65 companies was conducted via email and responses to online questionnaires.
June 29, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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