On the eve of the start of a two-day “Town Hall” hosted by the Federal Trade Commission titled “Behavioral Advertising: Tracking, Targeting and Technology,” privacy groups are calling for an online “do not track” list, an Internet version of the popular Do Not Call Registry, according to reports.

CMP Channel 's exclusive research identifies a shift in the Channel marketplace. According to this research, for the first time Vendor/Solution Provider loyalty has moved from the vendor to the customer. It also highlights the characteristics of the Channel's partners and how each is responsible for growth. The research notes that vendors prioritizing their efforts around the top 20-30 percent of partners will not necessarily help them achieve their growth objectives.

Key research findings include:

• Fifty percent of Solution Providers rate current level of vendor relationships as 'less than positive'
• Solution Providers have been proactively changing their vendors at an accelerated pace over the past two years. Fifty percent are targeting new markets and 50 percent are expanding new product lines.
• The top three most important program elements Solution Providers evaluate when considering a vendor for a strategic partnership include: product quality/reliability; technology relevance to customer base; and relative profit potential.
• The top three reasons Solution Providers add products and vendors include: technology offering/customer requirements; aligns with business goals; and offers a clear business opportunity.
• The top three reasons Solution Providers drop or de-emphasize products and vendors include: non competitive pricing; bad service; and adding other vendors.

This document presents only a summary of the available research. Please email Kate Spellman for complete details. Download this document...

This year's "EE Times Salary Survey," answered by almost 1,600 respondents, reveals that the median salary for EEs in the United States has increased slightly, to $108,800, from last year's $104,300. That compares with European respondents' median of just over $61,000, and that of Japanese engineers, coming in at $65,400. American engineers, with annual compensation nearly 40 percent higher than their closest competitors, have reason to be satisfied with their current lot monetarily, but they have reservations about foreign competition. In the first installment of "The State of the Engineer," back in August, we explored these very immigration issues affecting foreign engineers in the United States.

Here, Part II discusses how salary disparities, competition and globalization weigh on the engineer's mind. It also includes an "online exclusive" that explores further, more intricate aspects of the immigration issue. Read the complete article on EE Times online.

The 2007 Forrester Research Study just released through American Business Media simultaneously examined more than 800 marketers who operate in the business media space and 800 end-users to provide an assessment of the current state and value of business-to-business media.

In summary, the report finds that:

• Business decision makers (BDMs) are shifting to digital media use at a faster rate than B2B marketers are adopting this media

• Industry-specific media are more effective at reaching BDMs than general business media

• While each of the key industry-specific media demonstrates unique strengths, they are most effective when used together in an integrated manner

• Industry-specific media extend the reach and effectiveness of the B2B marketer’s sales organization

• B2B marketers plan to underutilize industry-specific media in their future spending compared to BDM’s expected use of these media

Download the presentation from the American Business Media website.

Highlights of the findings:

Event marketers are increasingly turning to the virtual world for staging large- and small-scale events. A recent white paper released by FactPoint Group, a market research firm, studied events created by Unisfair, a virtual event provider, and found that moving events to the virtual world can reduce spending and boost attendance, lead generation and attendee interest.

The study examined more than 200 Unisfair virtual events that totaled nearly 3,000 sponsors and 500,000 attendees. The results found that the average virtual event has a registration of 3,102 people with an attendance of 1,587. Leads generated for each sponsor totaled 348 per event, and attendees spent an average of two-and-a-half hours at each event while visiting an average 16 locations and completing at least five downloads.

Aside from convenience, event marketers have found that the reason virtual events have proven so successful is because they can mimic nearly every aspect of live events. "We do events on a real-world scale," said John Jainschigg, executive director of CMP Metaverse at CMP Media, a media and marketing solutions company that holds its virtual events inside Second Life. "[Our events are] six days long, [with] 50 presenters, a weekend of tutorials, a full convention center show floor, social events, networking events—it's a comprehensive thing." Read the complete article on BtoBOnline. Contact John Jainschigg, Executive Director, CMP Metaverse for more information about creating a virtual event for your company.

The numbers are nearly parallel: About 53% of marketing executives responding to a recent survey said they have experienced a business crisis resulting in negative news coverage, declining sales or reduced profitability. But just about the same number (57%) said their company does not have a crisis response plan currently in place.

The online survey, which was conducted in mid-September by BtoB and Eric Mower and Associates, group b2b, took the pulse of 251 marketing executives about their crisis preparedness.

Among the 43% of companies that do have a crisis plan in place, 10.1% worry about their ability to implement it, and only half have trained spokespersons. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

While marketing metrics has become a hot topic in the last several years, the most recent ANA survey indicated a number of worrisome declines. For example, in the 2006 survey, 28% of respondents said they could forecast the impact of a 10% reduction in marketing budget on sales, only 18% said this in this year's survey. Likewise, the percentage saying they used cross-functional teams from such departments as sales and finance declined from 45.3% in 2006 to 20.1% in 2007. And only 22% said they had "full cooperation and an open dialogue with finance" to establish metrics and methodologies for marketing ROI.

While there may be many causes, Nardone and See suggested the lack of a financial commitment to measurement was one factor. The most recent survey found that 57% of marketers invested less than 1% of their working marketing budget into accountability and that only about half (49%) even had a dedicated budget for accountability. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

it with the slowing economy and pressure to cut costs, technology companies are decreasing their rate of marketing spending this year, according to IDC's annual tech marketing benchmark study.

According to the report, which was based on an online survey and telephone interviews with 99 senior IT marketing executives, tech marketing spending will be up 6.1% this year over last, a drop from the growth rate projected by IDC in March of 8.0%.

Last year, tech marketing spending grew by 7.5% over 2005.

Also, for the first time since 2004, tech marketing spending will lag global IT spending, which is projected to increase 6.7% this year. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Google, which built a multibillion-dollar empire on Web ads spanning four lines of simple text, is aggressively branching out in new areas of online advertising including interactive units, mobile ads and video text-overlays.

These initiatives and others are aimed at helping Google continue its rapid growth, which relies almost entirely on advertising revenue. Google has tentacles reaching into nearly every aspect of advertising—not just the Web and mobile but print, TV and radio as well.

For b-to-b marketers and ad buyers, the challenge is to figure out which Google directions are worth following, particularly in a b-to-b market where targeting is often more important than mere reach. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

While broad-based ad networks have taken center stage as the darlings of the media industry, vertical b-to-b networks are slowly gaining traction with marketers that want to reach more targeted audiences.

In the last six months, there has been a frenzy of deals in the consumer ad network space, including Google's acquisition of DoubleClick in April for $3.1 billion, WPP Group's purchase of 24/7 Real Media in May for $649 million and AOL's acquisition of Tacoda in July for a reported $275 million.

But behind the scenes, smaller advances have been made by targeted b-to-b networks looking to reach industry-specific segments. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

he importance of a highly responsive mailing list in determining the success of a direct mail campaign cannot be overestimated. Before choosing a list for your campaign, it is important to understand industry basics as well as the distinct roles of list managers and brokers.

List managers represent the actual owner of a mailing list that you might consider renting. List brokers are consultants who can help you find lists of mail responders (people who have responded to some type of mailing and have asked to receive information) who match your target profile. List selects cost more, but they enable you to target demographic, geographic and psychographic information to create a mailing list that will garner an even higher response rate.

Remember that lists are rented—normally for one-time use only. Each time you wish to send out a mailing, you must rent those names anew. Discounts for multiple uses are standard industry practice.

As e-mail marketing has taken hold in recent years, list selection has become even more critical. Permission-based e-mail marketing—communications sent only to those who have specifically requested to receive marketing messages for products and services like yours—is critical, as even one misstep can result in e-mail distributors blacklisting you for future efforts.

Sending an offer to a list that has not specifically opted to receive e-mail about your product or service, or using a list gleaned from membership directories, for example, could have negative consequences.

List selection is an ongoing process in an ever-changing market. But by testing... Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Internet advertising revenue for the first half hit a record $9.993 billion, up 26.4% from the year-earlier period, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, which released a report Thursday. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Senior executives, including C-level officers at large and midsize companies, have a voracious appetite for quality business information, according to a survey released by Ipsos Media. The online survey was conducted from February through July. It garnered 2,390 responses, mostly from U.S. business executives at companies with 250 or more employees. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

New research from Doremus and the Financial Times found that senior executives prefer print over online as a trusted source of information and for in-depth analysis. The study was conducted online in June with more than 600 C-level executives in North America, Europe and Asia. According to the study, 59% of executives said they trust print over online sources of information, and 64% said they pay more attention to print ads than online ads. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.