Welcome back to Campaign Street after a bit of a delay since our last publish. The reason for this delay is that I have been working on a number of projects and haven't had time to do any pod casting. Here's what were up to.

We are revamping the Opt In Plus site. We've been working on this project now since November, the site is almost ready to go live and should be published on the web either next week or the following week. We have been working with Canada's top design firm Acro Media from Vancouver BC on the project and they have been snapping the pieces together under our direction. My partner Serge did a lot of the graphical headers for the site and of course I helped choose the art. Its an absolutely stellar website and is cutting edge in terms of quality, art, navigation, and so on. I can't wait to see it go live.

Additionally, We have been working on our extravagant media website. We have a rough version published on the web now at www.ExtravagantMedia.com but sometime next week we'll be uploading the final version which has more graphical elements and a lot more content. We basically needed to post the site a bit early to time our ad that we ran in Revenue magazine.

Although we're sure you didn't notice. In our Revenue magazine ad we intentionally misspelled the word hygiene. We did this because in our testing we have shown that ads that have a small spelling error tend to be remembered more often.

We are also getting together all of the print work for our media kit. Modern Imagination is giving us a hand with this and has laid out all of the glossy pages and the folder and business cards under our specification. The kit looks amazing and will be ready for when we travel to San Francisco for AD Tech.

Autoswag.com is also running off 200 special edition CampaignStreet street signs which we will be giving away at the show. It should be pretty cool to see a number of people running around the expo floor with street signs.

Oh and before I forget the big news for Campaign Street is that we are releasing a greatest hits CD. We're going to run off a few thousand copies of the CD and give these out at ad tech as well. Basically it will be a compilation of some of our funniest moments as well as our more interesting bits of conversation since we started.

Okay so here is the news.

A report that landed in my email box this morning from EMarketer.com explains that email marketing is more effective on Canadian consumers than in the US.

Quoting the article directly here.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB), which fielded a survey to compare e-mail marketing effectiveness in Canada with campaigns originating south of the border in the US, Canada is a leader in e-mail delivery, open and click-through rates.

Looking at averages over the three types of newsletter lists and over three years (2003-2005), the survey pegged Canadian delivery rates at nearly 93%, open rates at 55% and click-through rates over 8%.

"All firmly establish Canada as a leader in the industry," said Paula Gignac, president of the IAB Canada. "Individual results provide even stronger proof, and highlight Canada's heightened customer receptiveness and interaction - making e-mail an integral part of any smart marketer's overall strategy this year."

It is worth noting that nothing in the IAB release goes the next step, and really compares the Canadian rates to US numbers.

Data on e-mail delivery rates by industry in the US, presented by Bronto last fall, showed rates somewhat higher than the IAB 93% number. In fact, though it did not include general consumers, as the IAB numbers presumably did, the weighted average deliver rate across the industry categories was 95.5% - 2.5% higher than the Canadian rate.

According to Mediabuyerplanner.com Microsoft is getting into the ad network business and has begun testing running ads across its various services including msn, office live, and a few other services. The inventory was immediately sold out prior to launch.

From the Associated Press

Datran Settles Spam Probe The company will pay $1.1 million to end allegations it used improperly acquired personal information to send unsolicited e-mails.

From the Associated Press
March, 13 2006 ALBANY, N.Y. - A company accused of using unauthorized personal data "mined" by other firms from millions of e-mail addresses nationwide has agreed to reform its practices under a $1.1-million settlement, New York officials said Sunday.

Datran Media Corp. of New York, a leading e-mail marketer, used e-mail addresses and other personal data it obtained from several companies, Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer's office said. The settlement was scheduled to be announced today.

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The Internet "customer acquisition" companies proclaimed on their websites that they wouldn't lend or sell the information provided. Consumers were often enticed to reveal their names, addresses and financial data in exchange for free iPods and DVD movies.

Spitzer accused Datran of knowing of the companies' pledges but nevertheless spamming those consumers with unsolicited e-mails advertising discount drugs, diet pills and other products. Spitzer's staff said it believed this was the largest deliberate breach of Internet privacy discovered by U.S. authorities. "We have always been and remain committed to industry best practices," Datran spokesman Mark Naples said. "Therefore, we are pleased to resolve this matter with the attorney general and are gratified that his office worked collegially with us." Naples said Datran never received financial data and never sent e-mails regarding discount drugs. He said that although 6 million e-mails were involved, that didn't represent 6 million people. Spitzer's probe began after an Internet security assurance company raised a concern, Assistant Atty. Gen. Karen Geduldig said.

"Personal information equals marketing dollars," Spitzer said. "You learn more about consumers who you want to target in a hundred different ways, and there's nothing wrong with that if you get the information properly."

Many of the operators request personal data that can be used in marketing and for companies to better tailor their products to consumers' needs and wants. Often the operators of the sites promise not to sell the name or e-mail address that accompanies the data.