The Wall Street Journal is shaping up its advertising sales department, trying to better integrate sales and marketing, in an effort to help advertisers better penetrate the 19 million readers of The Wall Street Journal and its Digital Network.  “This reorganization is a response to the increasing requests by our advertisers for integrated solutions across all media,” said L. Gordon Crovitz, executive vice president, Dow Jones & Company, and publisher, The Wall Street Journal.  For the full story, click here.

Job growth as reflected in newspapers may be slowing as recent data shows help wanted ads falling across the country - Click here for the story. 

Online ads increased, but at a slower pace.  The largest drop-offs were in the western U.S. markets.  This trend will likely to continue to parallel the slowing of the economy in general towards the end of the year.     

According to UBS Wealth Management’s recent report headed by Roger Franklin, Britain’s public sector needs to get involved earlier in a start-up company’s development. The public sector support in the UK is strong, but it needs to come earlier to help more fledgling companies survive.

This earlier investment encourages more entrepreneurs to take that first step to building a new company. One important statistic is that Israel, which has a similar venture capital structure as the United States has almost four times the venture capital investment as most of the major countries in Europe. Frankly, all countries should do more in the area of getting small companies started. The goal for all nations should be to push innovation since it usually contributes to a creation of new jobs going forward.

Facebook has decided to move forward with plans to offer some advertising and let its users be targeted with ads.  This site has high potential due to the audience dynamic of young viewers.  The site seems mostly geared towards entertainment and social newtworking but there is a long list of players from job sites to banks that see a great new ad target.  For the larger article, Click here.

Both this site and YouTube seem a natural boost for on-line advertisers.  It may be surprising they’ve taken this long but one clear question is how much ads may “turn-off” their audience. 

When companies suffer financially, it spills over into media advertising.  Countrywide Financial is now looking at filing for bankruptcy, but did you know it was the fourth-biggest spender of online advertising during July spending $34.8 million?

You can see the entire article by clicking here.

Business to business providers for years have warned themselves at every revenue meeting that they must diversify their client base.  If a huge part of your revenue is tied to one customer or just a few customers, you had better watch them and do all you can to ensure their success.  When they lose, you lose and you have a small chance to get your investment back.

According to The McClathy Company, Advertising took a dip in July of 9.4% for consolidated advertising and total revenues were down 8.6%.  This probably wouldn’t be much of a concern since the summer is not always a great time for business to business advertising, but year-to-date revenues were also down 7.9%.

Certainly these numbers show the obvious challenge for all media to find not only unique messages, but unique delivery mechanisms to get their message through.  With a glut of messages coming at business and consumers, the need for the advertiser with a better mousetrap is incredible.  Read more about this study by clicking here.

Direct mail was always the tried and true method to capture new customers.  For years, the trend shifted towards e-mail, but marketers suggested that the tide would reverse when faced with anti-spam legislation and a growing push-back by businesses.  A recent research report indicates that the trend against direct mail is alive and well.  Click here for the full report.

It’s clear the cost of e-mailing can be a fraction of a direct mail, but it’s often a simple ‘delete’ to get rid of it.  On the other hand, a clever mail piece can float around the office for quite awhile.  At the moment though, it seems on-line marketing has finally overtaken direct mail.

For those companies with a very accurate mailing list and an appealing gimmick or packaging, direct mail may still be the way to go.  But the trend isn’t looking good.  Whatever happened to the sales phone call?  Does any executive pick the phone anymore?

The majority of on-line providers still do not report the true extent of fraud despite its obvious threat to the industry.  That’s the finding of a recent research study - click here for the full story.  The biggest obstacle may be time.  Tracking and careful reporting takes considerable resource and as a result, much of it remains unreported.

For many business service companies, this remains a constant problem but the true extent of it may remain significantly underestimated.  Firms also find that police often don’t put this at the top of the crime list and this attitude can contribute to the lack of focus.  Another approach may need to be found as the growth of on-line retailing continues to outpace in-store competition.

Solutions can include better tracking technologies, increased awareness from the public and better standardized processes.  The problem is surely not diminishing.

Microsoft has joined the heavyweights in on-line advertising with its recent purchase. In a space dominated by Google and Yahoo, Microsoft has now entered with both fee with its pricey acquisition this week. This is an area that major advertises continue to shift to from traditional outlets. Microsoft doesn’t feel it can sit this one out and sees high growth that is currently only going to some of its top rivals. For full article, click here.

In a continuing re-balancing from their reliance on desktop software and operating systems, Microsoft has already made big bets with games and music. It is likely to be a challenge for them to juggle yet another new challenge with on-line advertising. Do they have the bandwidth to take on a likely fast-moving business? They’ve paid a lot.