As the US online audience begins to see the last of the unconnected users begin serious uptake, and many formerly light and medium users move to a persistent connection, a full integration of Internet marketing into all marketing becomes increasingly critical.  In this edition, Martina Steen from interactive agency Refinery (x) sets down the basics for effectively integrating interactive marketing in support of offline product launches. In forthcoming part two, Martina will cover the quantification of results across channels in greater depth.

There is more to integrated marketing than just repeating the same message in different channels.  And, it is not an easy task to get the right balance of in-store promotions, mass advertising and online marketing in one campaign. So how should a brand manager use the online channel as part of the marketing mix when launching a new product?

The flow of data on the state of Internet Advertising continues to be encouraging. In recent weeks, enough positive information has come to the surface that it might finally be time to think less about the rising tide lifting all boats, and more about seeing the cream rise to the top.

Two of our final analysts, eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman and Jupiter Research Senior Analyst Gary Stein have been out in the press lately with some interesting data about the macro online advertising story, but also some drilled-down, category-specific data.

This week, much talk in the industry surrounded a study from the Pew Internet Project which suggested that 38% of users can't tell the difference between paid and organic search results. That is big enough. The research also suggested that nearly 2/3 of Internet users felt they could walk away from search completely and their life wouldn't be seriously impacted!

What?  No search?  But... But...

In ClickZ's words, a group of "former big agency executives" is launching a creative shop that outsources the bulk of the production work to offices in India. Banerjee & Partners will be headquartered in New York City, and " interestingly " plans to do most of the concept development in New York using standard creative teams.  The shop will do traditional and interactive work, and plans to be able to offer a competitive product in both channels at about half the cost.

Certainly, the writing has been on the wall for a while now that it isn't just manufacturing and low-level service work that can be outsourced. White collar jobs are fair game in any industry. There have even been a few cases of media content production jobs being outsourced to India, so it would seem that it was only a matter of time before the advertising side of the equation got its taste.

Last week, Internet Retailer had a piece last week on 2 analytics providers that have decided to migrate away from simple measures of what happened, and attempt to add metrics that get at why...

With the success (at least that’s what they tell us) of Burger King’s "Subservient Chicken" campaign, it should be no surprise that a spate of me-too...

much into this event, at least for now, however, we think this is a development for the better. All the great things that old Google did for advertisers should be valued on their own terms, and...

Lycos Europe finally gave up in their attempt to give-as-they-get to/from spammers. Lycos’ high profile “Make Love Not Spam” screensaver was dropped this week, with reps from the ...

A report from research firm The Meta Group suggests that some websites may be growing too old to suit the growing number of broadband users. At first pass, it feels a little odd to describe...

An article at TheStreet.com this week features comments from an industry analyst who insists that media companies need a “blog strategy”. While “Blog Strategy” sounds...

A recent Forbes.com study indicates that nearly 3 in 4 senior executives believe that advertising has a substantial influence on the success of their corporations, but fewer than half think that...

TNS Media Intelligence/CMR reports that overall spending numbers are up not just because more ads are being sold, but because the price of ads is up!  For the buyers this seems bleak, but the ...

Merriam-Webster reports that the most looked-up word in their online dictionary in 2004 was the word ‘blog’. To the degree this reflects the mindset of the Internet user in 2004, we at ...

Interactive advertising is still a young industry, but has already known a full cycle of boom and bust.  Certainly, we haven’t all been able to gorge ourselves this year like we have...