E-Commerce Blog

Online marketers converged on New York for the ad industry’s annual conference, where they held discussions on everything from tracking online brand buzz to using humor to lure a Web-surfing audience. But perhaps the most pressing topic for attendees of the Advertising Week V conference in Manhattan is the financial crisis gripping Wall Street and what it means for their business, especially on the Web. Companies dependent on Internet-based advertising are bracing for a slowdown as financial-service companies cut ad budgets.

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Online Ad Slowdown Looms

Call it a customer service Christmas. Consumers are expected to rein in spending this year, and the retail climate favors big-box stores that can offer bargains. But because small retailers can’t win price wars, experts say independents need to leverage their biggest advantage over the chains: personal relationships with customers and the ability to deliver superior service. With some economists predicting one of the weakest Decembers since 1991, retailers that falter could face a cold winter.

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How Small Stores Can Lure Holiday Shoppers

Apple tends to prove unstoppable even when other computer makers falter. In the most recent quarter, shipments of Macs surged 41 percent. That’s nearly three times the 15 percent global growth rate for PCs in general. But in the current quarter, as markets slide, banks go belly-up, and consumer confidence plunges, even the Apple growth engine may hit speed bumps, say some analysts who are revisiting their estimates just a month before Apple is due to report quarterly earnings for the period that ends Sept. 30.

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As Apple Shares Slide, What About Sales?

Will the interactivity of the media, the atomization of knowledge and the premium on rapid response result in a collective loss of wisdom, judgment and perspective? Opinions differ. If he wins, Barack Obama is going to be sworn in on a Koran instead of the Bible. Trig isn’t Sarah Palin’s baby, it’s her daughter Bristol’s. Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Here’s the list of books Palin wanted to ban from the library … All these claims — none of them true — turned up in the e-mail inboxes of millions of Americans this summer.

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In a Digital World, Lies Are Just a Click Away

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman helped build the online auctioneer into an American icon and transform the way individuals do business on the Internet. Her status in Silicon Valley rivaled that of Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison when she left the company this year after a decade to help her friend, Mitt Romney, run for president. Romney’s run wasn’t successful. But another bid for high office — her own as California governor in 2010 — may be in the cards.

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Will Meg Whitman Run?