13 posts tagged Shar's Posts

No doubt by now you've seen the news from Saturday that Microsoft withdrew its offer to buy Yahoo!. We've talked a bit about this already at different phases of the courtship. But yesterday we published a complete analysis of what's in store for interactive marketers now that the deal is a no-go.

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk] On a recent trip to Shanghai I attended a huge party for Adidas. I was there with a friend of a friend who works for Ticketmaster and specialize in creating exclusive events and PR for brands, bands and celebrities.

Within the last two weeks I’ve participated in digital workshops for two different globally recognizable CPG companies, each focused on promoting awareness and use of interactive channels among their brand managers. And I’ll tell you, after all we know about the cost effectiveness of interactive marketing and the pervasive use of internet technologies by consumers.

I’m launching a quant study to fuel two pieces of research: 1) The first is focused on identifying the levels of maturity among interactive marketers across industries. When finished this report will define the different interactive marketing maturity levels, the characteristics of firms at each

Breaking news in the interactive marketing space...Microsoft announced today a $44.6 billion bid to acquire long-time online rival Yahoo!. The bid represents a $31 per share price which is a 62% premium over current trading value. You may recall an eerily similar announcement from last summer when Microsoft first launched efforts to woo Yahoo! into a deal.

I was just talking with Suresh Vittal on my team about how to project interactive marketer investments in technology. In some cases in the US Interactive Marketing Forecast, we include technology investments in our projections of marketer spend on a given channel (for example, email marketing spend includes investment in email message delivery).

I had a recent holiday travel experience which got me thinking about loyalty programs. Here's what happened: I traveled home to see my family in Nebraska on American Airlines, Forrester's preferred airline and the airline where I have all my miles and am currently a Platinum Advantage member.

I got an email last week from a marketing firm that was different than most of the briefing requests I get. This firm, Milk Media, partners with dairies to place branded advertisements on the back of the individual-sized milk cartons served at lunch time in schools around the country.

When I kicked off the research for Forrester's 5 -year Interactive Marketing Forecast this past August, I had originally intended to also include affiliate marketing in the projections. I got a great run down on current trends in the space from Steve Denton at Linkshare and John Ardis and Dave Osmon from Commission Junction.

If you've never been to Barcelona, you may not know that the local language here is actually not Spanish...it's Catalan, the native language of Barcelona's region: Catalunya. Children here are taught in Catalan, and while many also learn Spanish and likely English, I've run into several locals who speak only Catalan.