Tools of the Trade - Feb. 10, 2000

PC Data Online and Leading Web Advertisers (LWA) have partnered to offer a new service aimed at providing Web advertisers a clear insight as to how effective their online campaigns are. The service links together PC Data Online's sample Internet population of over 100,000 home users with LWA's premier advertising tracking expertise to provide "a comprehensive, cost effective evaluation of spending and audience delivery on the Web."

"The industry is crying out for a timely measure of an ad campaign's delivery and spending on the Web," said Ann Stephens, president of PC Data Online.

The new system will utilize state-of-the-art Web ad tracking and audience surveys to identify relative value of an Internet advertising campaigns in terms of the targeted audience delivery and cost efficiency. The service is expected to be available in early spring.

McAfee.com, a leading global consumer Application Service Provider (ASP) of online PC security and management services, has unveiled a new advertising technology--code-named "Silhouette"--designed to provide online advertisers with the ability to deliver highly targeted, rules-based online advertising to PCs while ensuring complete consumer privacy. The targeting capabilities in Silhouette are based on hardware and software profiles of the user's computer that are dynamically generated, stored and processed on the user's PC. According to McAfee.com, the privacy-enabled architecture of the product ensures that the only information transmitted from the user's PC is an advertising campaign ID, that no information about the individual or the individual's computer ever leaves the user's PC and that the advertising server cannot build a profile of the user based on advertisements served. McAfee.com plans to integrate the Silhouette technology into the website and current and future services like the McAfee Clinic and the recently announced McAfee Personal Firewall Service. The company also plans to license the technology to other advertising-centric Internet businesses.

If you happen to be within a hop, skip and jump from Boca Raton, Florida, you might want to check out a new series of educational conferences put on by The Standard. Dedicated to the growth of business-to-business e-commerce, the "iB2B" series of conferences will focus exclusively on the growing business-to-business sector of the Internet economy. The conferences will offer networking and learning opportunities while providing first-hand exposure to the visionaries and technologies driving the growth of the business-to-business sector. iB2B will feature the following speakers: Mark Walsh, President & CEO, VeriticalNet; David P. Perry, President, CEO, and co-founder of ChemDex; Doug Hickey, CEO, CriticalPath; Jake Winebaum, General Partner, e-Companies, LLC; and Nick Earle, SVP and CMO of Hewlett Packard. It will also feature several additional panels, interviews, and a "demo expo" featuring the products and services of more than 30 business-to-business. Visit www.thestandard.com/ib2b for more information.

Media Metrix and management consulting firm McKinsey & Company have formed a "strategic research alliance" to develop a deep understanding of online consumer behavior and its implications for e-businesses. Combining McKinsey's in-depth marketing and e-business expertise with Media Metrix' leadership position in online audience measurement, the new alliance should bring powerful insights into the e-consumer to help executives build, grow and market stronger e-businesses. Through the alliance, McKinsey will be able to leverage Media Metrix' comprehensive database of actual online usage, further supporting clients across the full spectrum of developing sustainable e-business models. Media Metrix will gain an even deeper understanding of online behavior and trends, strengthening its ability to meet clients' information requirements.

Wired News reported this week that Anderson Consulting has launched a new venture that will provide an estimated $1.2 billion worth of services to Internet startups in exchange for equity or a combination of cash and stock. "That equity, we hope, will be worth $10 billion," said Mary Tolan, managing partner of growth and strategies at Andersen and head of the new venture.

With gazillions of surveys spewing an endless stream of data throughout the Internet, wouldn't it be nice to actually be able to make sense of it all? And wouldn't you like to harness that data and use it to conduct your own survey--one that's right for your business? The associates at Perseus Development Corporation, a software developing company that specializes in online surveys, think they've got the answer. The company recently published a free white paper, "Customer Satisfaction - A Web-Based Methodology," that discusses the process of utilizing the Web to conduct customer-satisfaction research. The paper is the fifth in a series of white papers that Perseus has released in the past year, all of which deal with the benefits of Internet-based surveying. This particular paper is a step-by-step guide through the phases of conducting a successful customer-satisfaction survey. Written by Rich Nadler of Perseus, the paper provides insight into how a professional market research company performs the task of developing and implementing such a project. The entire series of Perseus white papers can be found at:
www.perseus.com/surveytips/whitepapers.html

Along those same lines, Primix Solutions Inc., a premier strategic Internet services firm, is partnering with Greenfield Online, a full-service market research provider, to create an online do-it-yourself survey tool designed to capture immediate directional feedback from more than 60 percent of the Internet population. The new service, QuickTake.com(SM), lets businesses use a pre-defined or fully customized question template to create a survey, distribute it across the Internet, and manage and interpret incoming responses. The survey can be used to test consumer reactions to ideas, products, concepts, packaging and political issues, before risking time, money or reputation on more in-depth, high-end statistical research studies.