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America Online has not stopped advertising with the start of war. In fact, the company launched a new campaign touting its broadband service during Sunday’s Academy Awards show. AOL plans to spend roughly $35 million on the new broadcast and cable television advertising blitz over the next two months. AOL for Broadband will be released at the end of March as a new service designed to be used with already established broadband service. Last year AOL suffered its first ever decline in subscribers during the fourth quarter, losing a large number of dial-up customers who presumably went elsewhere for broadband. The new broadband package featuring exclusive video content and pop-up blocking software costs $9.95 for AOL users and $14.95 for non-users. It’s part of a bring-your-own-access initiative that AOL will continue to expand this year. Sunday’s commercials included a rather creepy one featuring a moaning actress Sharon Stone wearing a flimsy nightie. It introduced the company’s new slogan: “Welcome to the World Wide Wow.” Only about 600,000 of AOL’s customers use the company’s broadband service. More than 33.5 million Americans have broadband, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
Study: Paid content spending will jump 30 percent
Paid content spending will continue to rise fast in 2003 after a record-breaking 2002. A new study from Jupiter Research predicts growth will reach 30 percent over last year but also notes that online advertising remains the most effective money-maker on the web. Jupiter predicts that paid content spending will hit $2 billion in 2003. Annual growth rates of 20 percent should put spending at $5.4 billion by 2007. Because the spending is so splintered among different areas, such as business, sports and personals, advertising remains the most reliable source of income. Jupiter found that for at least the next two years, most sites will get two-thirds of their revenues from advertising.
Startup claims new way to block nasty spam
Unsolicited marketers of brand X Viagra and diet pills, take note: A new company claims to have found a way to eliminate spam forever. Mailblocks, financed by software designer Phil Goldman, debuted Monday with a promise that Goldman hopes will catch spam-weary consumers’ interest. The company will offer email services for an annual fee of $9.95 in return for completely blocking all spam, it claims. Though basic spam filtration services are provided for free by the market’s biggest email providers, including Yahoo, America Online and Hotmail, these programs don’t catch everything. There are other software programs, such as SpamKiller or SpamNet, that also whack unsolicited email but none has been perfected. Mailblocks will use a new challenge-response system that only sends email on to the recipient once the sender has filled out an automatic response form.
Chinese hit illegal advertisers with phone blitz
Not that a little spam is always a bad thing. A new plan in the Chinese city of Hangzhou is actually using the annoying stuff to force illegal advertisers to turn themselves in. City officials have initiated a clever new system in which cell phones are inundated with prerecorded voice messages. They target illegal advertisers who include mobile phone numbers on their ad stickers. The postcard-size stickers have become a real problem in parts of China because advertisers leave the eyesores on just about any surface. The Hangzhou program calls the phones every 20 seconds and leaves this message: “You have broken the law by posting illegal ads. You must immediately stop this activity and go to the Hangzhou Urban Administrative Bureau for punishment.” More often than not, the advertisers comply. Potential customers can’t get through with the city ringing in three times per minute. Changing phone numbers isn’t really an option because earlier advertising would be for nothing. The government has assured wary citizens that the tactic will only be used against advertisers.
Hot web trend: Putting $ on Hussein's toppling
Forget the NCAA tournament. The real March Madness is the latest trend in gambling – betting on Saddam Hussein’s demise. Gambling sites the world over are asking users to wager on how long the Iraqi leader can continue to evade U.S. and British troops and bombs. Web sites such as Tradesports.com and Betonsports.com offer the untraditional wager. The oddsmakers have revised their numbers several times already. At the beginning of the month, futures traded on Tradesports.com had Hussein’s chances of being deposed by the end of March at 20 percent. Friday those odds had risen to 79 percent. Tradesports.com reports more than $1 million in Hussein trading since September. The wager has become the site’s second-most-popular behind college basketball. Betonsports.com reports taking bets as high as $500 on whether Hussein will be killed or merely exiled.
March 25, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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