Ziff Davis, a one-time publishing Goliath that employed over 1200 people, has skipped an interest payment due yesterday and is entering into negotiations with debt holders to restructure about $390 million in debt, writes the New York Post. The company has retained Alvarez & Marsal to handle the restructuring.
Fox Interactive is planning the revamp of more than 160 Fox TV affiliate websites, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVox).
The move will bring the MyFOX content and ad platform to those sites. Those using the software will have a similar look and feel, including the ability to add community blogs, message boards and more robust multimedia content.
The class of 2011 is heading back to campuses wielding more connections, concern and consumer clout than any class before them. Alloy Media + Marketing’s 7th Annual Alloy College Explorer, powered by Harris Interactive, shows that the class of 2011 (the largest college class in history) has evolved in three key areas: communication modality, purchase behavior, and concern over world issues.
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Not surprisingly, website design is a top priority for web retailers, 60.3 percent of which have redesigned their e-commerce sites in the past year, including 20.1 percent in the past three months and 14.3 percent within six months, according to Internet Retailer’s survey on website design, content and rich media, writes MarketingCharts.
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Advertisers are increasingly shifting ad dollars to social networking sites from portal sites, much of that money going to MySpace and Facebook, according to a recent eMarketer report, “Social Network Advertising: Where to Next?”
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With Mattel ordering recall after recall, its brand is beginning to pay the price, MediaPost reports (via Environmental Leader). Robert Passikoff, founder of Brand Keys, says that most brands can weather one recall fairly well. Mattel’s Brand Keys measure declined just seven percent after the first recall in early August. After yesterday’s recall it’s already down 20 percent.
In a bid to help advertisers reach a very targeted audience - the minority communities in the Hampton Roads area - the Virginian-Pilot is launching a multicultural magazine.
Thirty-thousand copies of the glossy-covered magazine, called MIX, will be distributed for free in racks in the Hampton Roads area, writes Editor & Publisher.
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The National Football League now has an official bank. Bank of America has announced its sponsorship of the league, making it the first-ever Official Bank of the NFL in the United States. The agreement expands upon a partnership already in existence between the bank and the NFL that included NFL and team-identified credit cards and a sports rewards program that BofA claims was the first ever.
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Online lead generation has always been an aggressive medium, and one that has sometimes led to controversy. Now, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has inked a list of best practices that will help standardize the transfer and receipt of data between advertisers and lead-generation service providers.
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Arbitron is having difficulty meeting its sample targets in Houston and Philadelphia for its PPM panels. The company is working to remove so-called “poor responders” from the panels, but is struggling to replace those households with more responsive ones. It expects to have full panels in place in Philadelphia by the end of September, and in Houston by early October.
Advertising within highly engaging gaming experiences have significant positive impact on purchase consideration, ad recall and “coolness” perception of brands, according to a Nielsen Entertainment study conducted for Microsoft’s Massive Inc., MarketingCharts reports.
MTV Networks has been attempting to serve up more targeted audiences to advertisers, and its most recent move in that direction is the agreement by its Logo channel to purchase DowneLink.com, a social network for the multicultural lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. DowneLink.com, with 400,000 users, makes a substantial addition to Logo.
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The use of the internet for credit card account management has increased significantly, with customers visiting card issuers’ sites 57 percent more often to service their accounts in 2006 than in 2005, according to a comScore study of online credit card services. That increase follows a similar - 55 percent - rise in 2005 over 2004, writes MarketingCharts.
