If you happen to be in a market where you like to be cutting edge – and up to date with trends online as they happen, then you are going to need to find your information from a variety of sources. Chasing the news and being first always has its rewards from a traffic perspective, and as the web is becoming more and more real-time its never been a better time to keep your finger on the pulse.

via 10 websites to keep your finger on the online pulse.

There’s a fierce debate going on in the digital media world. One side claims mobile ads are effective and the other that they just don’t work. Steve Jobs has said that “mobile ads suck,” despite acquiring Quattro Wireless, a mobile ads company, three months ago. However, in my experience, mobile ads work, and there’s empirical proof.

via Decoding the Mobile Ad Space.

It happens every spring. TV buyers start planning for the upcoming upfront buying season, and digital media executives ponder the question — are we having an upfront, too?

The prospect of a digital upfront — one focused on video, specifically — was the topic du jour on Monday during a one-day conference hosted by the organization digiday at the W Hotel in New York. During a standing-room-only panel session featuring representatives from several top digital agencies, the concept of a digital upfront was derided by some and cautiously embraced by others.

via Digital Upfront: Fantasy or Reality?.

Twitter finally took the wraps off its long-awaited advertising system, borrowing ideas from companies already matching advertisers with tweets.

Twitter is calling its system Promoted Tweets. The initiative allows advertisers like Best Buy and Virgin Airlines to buy their way into the stream of short-message updates Twitter users consume. Promoted Tweets will first appear in related search results. Ultimately, Twitter plans to inject them into the stream directly, matching a brand’s Promoted Tweet with users that fit geographic or interest-based criteria. Best Buy, for instance, could target people who follow others with tech interests.

via Twitter Starts ‘Promoted Tweets’ Ad System.

Microsoft-owned MSN is going after traditional brand dollars with a new magazine-like content site called Glo, a women’s lifestyle venue produced in conjunction with Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S and BermanBraun.

via MSN Launches Glo, a Women’s Lifestyle Site.

The flurry of recent media announcements around mobile apps probably has you thinking this might be your easy marketing answer for 2010. Beware the hype, because beneath the excitement lies plenty of stats that show it’s still a plaything compared to text messaging, which continues to deliver impressive year-over-year growth across all demographic groups.

via Forget Apps, Text Still Reigns in Mobile.

Last year, those Evian roller babies skated their way into the pages of the Guinness World Records as the most-viewed online advertisement in history, with what the company now claims is more than 100 million views.

But one achievement it did not pull off? A boost in U.S. sales. Evian lost market share as sales dropped 28 percent in each of the first two quarters, although it reduced those declines to 26 percent in the third quarter and 19 percent in the fourth, according to Beverage Digest. Continue reading →

Internet Broadcasting, a company that provides local Web sites, content and advertising to several media companies, introduced a new Web ad unit called a “hover ad.”

Anchored to the bottom of the user’s browser, the ad remains visible as the user scrolls up and down a Web page. The reader can minimize the ad at any time, leaving a branded button at the bottom of the screen that can be expanded or closed.

Post-Newsweek Stations is one of the first of IB’s media partners to test the new ad format. Continue reading →

As marketers clamor for useful data, change is coming in the profession that supplies much of it. Released last week at an Advertising Research Foundation conference in New York, a survey of research professionals by GfK Custom Research North America reveals ways in which these people see marketing/advertising research evolving in this decade. Continue reading →

Search-engine marketing continues to grow, according to a survey released this month by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and Econsultancy, with money often being shifted from other kinds of marketing in order to fund it. But the survey’s respondents (professionals in this field) say measurement of return on investment continues to be the foremost challenge for search.

via Search Marketing to Grow.

At a time when magazines are everyone’s whipping boy, Graydon Carter offers evidence to the contrary. It’s not for nothing that he has the distinction of being the only editor to be named AdweekMedia’s editor of the year twice (1997, 2003), while Vanity Fair has been on the Hot List nine times. The Conde Nast monthly is widely regarded as one of the best magazines around. So we asked Carter: What does the future hold for magazines? Here’s his answer. Continue reading →

Growing up in the late ‘50s-early ‘60s in a small Oregon town, Chris Johns was transported to amazing places through the plethora of books and magazines he devoured when visiting his grandparents home. His favorite publication was National Geographic, with its distinctive yellow spine and trademark yellow portrait-frame cover, that inside teemed with brilliant color photography, foldout maps and fascinating tales from around the globe. “That magazine captured my imagination and took me to places, connected me to cultures, landscapes and environments that I never dreamed I would ever visit,” says Johns.

via Magazine Hot List 2010: Web Site of the Year.

In 2009, e-mail marketers started to get social, but 2010 will be the year social media makes e-mail marketing more powerful, according to eMarketer.

Social media is a partner, not a threat, to e-mail marketing because it provides new avenues for sharing and engaging customers and prospects.

Even though people are spending more time using social media, they are not abandoning e-mail. The two channels can help each other, offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections.