The Focus Group: Advertisers are inventing new ways into the consumer’s head

My research department doesn’t know it, but I’m killing all our focus groups.” So spoke Cammie Dunaway, chief marketing officer at Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ), at a Silicon Valley conference in September. Dunaway doesn’t plan to harm the groups of innocents that marketers have long assembled in beige conference rooms to observe behind two-way mirrors, like zoo animals, as they hold forth about coffee and shampoo preferences. But she does want to put the two-way-mirror manufacturers out of business.
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Internet advertising up 38 percent in first quarter

U.S. Internet advertising surged 38 percent to a record $3.9 billion in the first quarter as marketers moved additional dollars to the Web, according to data released on Tuesday.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers surveyed leading companies that sell advertising space online, including Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. , which are benefiting as consumers spend more of their media and purchasing time on the Internet.
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