 |
||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|||
Web money and interactive games Innovation is leading to better and
better Web sites. The key problem is bringing people back to a site over and over. Some sites embed advertising into interactive games that are part of the site itself. MCI Communications had players "use"
MCI business tools to defend a fictional publishing house from a hostile takeover. The game attracted two million players. But until recently, marketers have been without three key marketing tools: a sense of the
Internet's demographics, a reliable way of tracking site visits and a secure protocol for buying things online. Each of these barriers is coming down. Although criticized for its methodology, a survey available from
the Nielsen Media Research Unit ( The average surfer comes from a household with an income of $80,000(US), 64 per cent of
"Internauts" have four years of higher education, and more than half are managers or professionals. Of the 37 million North Americans with Internet access, 2.5 million have already used the Internet to buy
goods or services. Surprisingly, one surfer in three is female, despite the Net's "nerdboy" image. Both Nielsen and the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) are offering services that monitor Web page use, much
as television and radio ratings are monitored. Both offer systems that go beyond the misleading practice of simply tracking "hits." Meanwhile, Intuit, Microsoft and many others are working on a way to use
secure third parties to handle purchases over the Internet. Digital Equipment Corp. may have found a way for writers to sell their work on the Net without jeopardizing their copyright. Readers using Millicent would
pay fractions of a penny to read articles, a price low enough to discourage piracy. Unfortunately, each transaction costs between two and five cents, a problem that can only be resolved by changing TCP/IP, the protocol
that has defined the Internet since 1969.
Cornerstone is a writing and editing firm that uses marketing and PR principles to
create "words you can build your business on." Call us from anywhere in the world for rush work.
|
|||