Author: atmasphere

New subscribers to high-speed Internet access care more about a low price than fast connection speeds, which is exactly what DSL providers want to hear. [CNET News.com – Communications]

The phone giant begins offering unlimited local and long distance Internet phone service for $40 a month, a move that’s expected to roil the telephone industry. [CNET News.com]

For the first time, more people in a U.S. city use high-speed connections than pokey dialup to surf the Net. Other major cities are close behind. [Wired News]

Seems that Unicast’s Full Screen – replay your existing 30 second spot – is a hit with advertisers and apparently even the viewers. I for one am glad I don’t have Windows running as WMP 9 is required to see these… I wonder whether the people who watch don’t know to skip (if that’s even possible) or if people are just accepting that intrusive ads onsite are a way of the surf now…

Encouraged by the initial results, advertisers have begun a new round of full-motion video commercials. [New York Times: Technology]

Although they can charge up to three times as much for these ads than static Internet ads, some Web site executives say they will only show one such ad daily to their Internet users.

“It’s such a disruptive moment,” said James Spanfeller, chief executive of Forbes.com. “You’ve basically asked to go to a Web page and all of a sudden you’re not there. There’s no science to the frequency cap, though. It’s more that we think it’s the right thing to do.”

Just when you thought they were going to be Time Warner Cable only…

The Internet service provider on Thursday is expected to announce a partnership to offer broadband Internet service through Covad Communications Group. [CNET News.com – Entertainment & Media]

The partnership is different than AOL’s previous attempts to sell customers a content-and-access bundle for $54.95 a month. That arrangement required AOL to lease DSL lines from local phone companies and manage all elements of the service, including customer service and billing.

AOL has since dissolved those leasing deals and has watched a similar partnership with cable giant Comcast fade away. Instead, the online leader hopes people using other broadband providers will want to pay an additional $14.95 a month to access its service.

Appealing to broadband users has been a major priority for AOL. The Time Warner division has watched its narrowband subscriber base steadily decline, culminating in a net loss of 2.2 million subscribers in 2003. However, AOL added 1.2 million broadband members, which includes its “bring your own access” customers, to total 3 million subscribers at the end of 2003.

Nice piece over at Knowlege@Wharton on some lessons to be learned from smart direct marketing. Here are some of the better highlights…

On being smart with your data collection:

Some retailers have been swept up in the technology that now allows them to gather extensive personal data, but that information does not necessarily relate to buying behavior. “I have heard industry professionals say they have this huge data warehouse and 600 different measures. I say, ‘Big deal, 595 of them are useless.’”

On Direct Mail and Catalogue marketing:

Hoch says catalog retailers, which once seemed threatened by the Internet, have found it has enhanced their businesses. The Internet makes it easier and faster to buy catalog merchandise, but customers still need the printed catalog in hand. It will be many years before the Internet has the bandwidth to portray the details and depth of merchandise in a typical glossy catalog, says Hoch.

Hoch points to Wharton research showing that the top indicator for whether shoppers would buy over the Internet was if they had already purchased from a catalog.

And on the lessons to be learned by traditional marketers:

According to Fader, all retailers can borrow from the experience of direct marketers. Direct marketers constantly experiment with better ways to target their faceless customers and potential customers, who never physically enter a store. Traditional store-based retailers do less experimentation, because they feel they already have a strong tie to their customers. “In many ways direct marketers are the best of the breed. Other marketers stand to learn quite a bit from them.”

You can read the full piece here.

I like what you are doing at WIN but please try not to continually cross-post your bits into each one of the different blogs you run. It really reduces the quality (and desirability to read) of each of them as you blast out your messages.

I actually previously blogged a similar practice from the Silicon Alley Reporter Days…though then it was about email.

I like reading about what you are doing, but seeing 2 or more of the same posts across blogs of supposedly different subjects in my aggregator just turns your content into noise.