MetaFilter posts tagged with online and advertising

The business of online loyalty programs

Nelson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:10:01 -0800

A US Senate Committee just released its report on online loyalty programs. Combined, Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue have made $1.4 billion in the past ten years charging customers $10-$20/month for marketing program memberships. Unfortunately, many of their customers (4 million this year) have no memory of authorizing the charges. A key enabler for signups is merchants passing credit card numbers directly to the loyalty program; the customer never has to enter billing data. Such "card on file" transactions have a conversion rate of roughly 4% (compared to 1% without). Many well-known Internet brands such as 1-800-Flowers, Classmates.com, Priceline, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Fandango, Buy.com, eHarmony, and Yahoo are paid $10 to $30 per signup to entice their customers to join the marketing programs. There's been a litany of lawsuits and settlements for years about these programs. In response the marketing companies have promised to change their practices, in some cases meticulously documenting page layout changes.

By the book

meech — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:51:09 -0800

HarperCollins is the first major publisher to give away an entire version of a new book online, revenue being raised through Yahoo! ads. But they don't seem to be 100% committed - if you go to their website you can pay $18.26 for the e-book and no mention is made of it being available free at the author's own website. [Appropriately the book, "Go it Alone" by Bruce Judson is about entrepreneurial ideas]

These bodies are FREE, so get one NOW!

signal — Mon, 17 May 2004 12:25:51 -0800

These bodies are FREE, so get one NOW!: Advertising and Branding in Social Virtual Worlds. [abstract / PDF]. Related to this thread.

First, do no evil...unless it costs us money

Mick — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 09:46:18 -0800

Sorry Matt, you can't post in this thread. Google changes its Adsense agreement so that anyone participating in the program is barred from talking about the program. First rule of Adsense, there is no Adsense.

mathowie — Wed, 19 Jan 2000 16:13:15 -0800

Carl wrote a great Industry Standard article lampooning online marketing, and I couldn't help but laugh at seeing a "B to B Convention" banner ad running at the end of it (screenshot).