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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36395)1/24/1999 5:54:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 164684
 
Excuse me Glenn but as an animal lover I can see that you havent read your latest copy
of Peta-online news (which you would have received if you had ever even looked at an
animal friendly book at your local amzn). It says live petstores are inhumane, in fact
theres an action alert asking Walmart to stop live action displays and sales. So no self
respecting animal lover would ever buy a pet at a brick and mortar store.... no sirree.
Instead, we get our pets at the local spca which has no incentive to sell pet food!


Michelle,

I never go to AMZN's web site. You see I dispise the management for many reasons. I suppose the largest reason is that in my opinion they have no ethics.

Secondly, we buy our pets at the Humane Society. Any book we need is available at the local Barnes and Nobles and I can have it the same day. Thirdly, my interest is in retailing and computers. I receive email "hints and tricks" from Apple all the time but I delete them immediatly. I read some of the National Jeweler Retail articles. They just send me an update when new articles are written.

Glenn



To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36395)1/24/1999 7:44:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph  Respond to of 164684
 
The Internet Capitalist
SG Cowen Internet Research
7
Having had the pleasure of covering this
company over the past few years, we have
heard the targeted advertising pitch very
consistently for the last few quarters. Of
course, targetability is a cornerstone of the
Internet as a medium and when it is combined
with mass reach numbers (like TV today or
broadband in the future), advertisers begin to
salivate. Yet, much like Pavlov's dogs,
advertisers have been conditioned to react to
such words without fully comprehending how
and why.
Ever since Excite announced the acquisition of
MatchLogic in 1Q98, the message has been
advertisers will pay more for targeted
audiences and that Excite (via MatchLogic)
would deliver them and collect the increased
revenues. While we agree this is a good
mantra and certainly one that differentiates
Excite from other portal competitors, the
reality is that the concept has not yet delivered
the top-line impact that the message inherently
promises. Worse, it seems that we shouldn't
expect it in 1999.
If you're scratching your heads, you're copying
us. We tried to get behind this curiosity by
querying Excite's management team on the Q$
results conference call. Their response: two
big barriers still stand in the way of realizing
the full value of targeting. First, it represents a
real paradigm shift in terms of how traditional
media is bought and sold. Most agencies are
not ready to make the transition. This reveals
the strategic and executional differences
between mass marketing and one-to-one
communication with the consumer. Let's use
Gillette as an example. Their target: active
men, 18 -44.
For years, they have successfully reached their
target through sports programming, but now,
thanks to the Internet, they are being told not
to worry about advertising on big sporting
events. The Web will deliver your advertising
message only to your target and will reach
them anywhere they go: financial news sites,
weather sites, engagementring.com, whatever.
The logic being that ad dollars would no
longer be spent passively, on the likelihood
that someone will be watching the big game,
but rather actively, seeking out the target
without the need to be locked into specific
programming.
The second barrier Excite referenced was
technology. Today, very little of their
inventory is so highly targeted. In truth, the
second reason is much more related to the
composition of the audience on the web.
Traditionally, the Internet population has been
more educated and upscale than the overall US
population. From an advertiser's perspective,
there is little incentive for the tail to the wag
the dog; packaged goods advertisers will invest
online only when their target is online. Thus,
it is important not just for the Internet
population to grow, but to change its audience
composition also.
While the growth of shopping on the web has
been partly attributed to more women coming
online, the growth of advertising on the web is
linked to a more diverse audience. As Michael
Eisner said recently after the launch of
Go.com, "I don't think we [Disney] are too
late. The next 50 million people to sign on (the
Internet) are not going to be early adopters,
they are going to be like my family, like my
mother...” And that is happening. A study
released by the Pew Research Center last week
found that people that went online for the first
time in 1998 were less wealthy than longtime
web users (23% with incomes under $30,000
vs. 16%) and less educated (almost twice as
likely not to have attended college vs. longtime
users).
A key reason much of today's inventory is not
targeted is the fact that most of today's web
advertisers are competing for the same target.



To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36395)1/24/1999 11:33:00 PM
From: Victor Lazlo  Respond to of 164684
 
Domestication of "pets" is an attempt by human beings to control nature and to attempt to control the uncontrollable forces of nature. Primitive man once greatly feared nature and its forces and thus tried to befriend what portions of nature they could. Pagan gods and superstitions also eminate from that time. We seek to extend our "control" into the nature beyond the thresholds of our domiciles to gain a greater measure of peace of mind.

Like astrology, the domestication of animals is a uniquely primal, instinctive motivation which, remarkably, survives to this "modern" day.