PayPal's sweeping changes to its acceptable-use policy now dictate exactly where users' funds can and cannot be spent. The change brings PayPal's policies in line with those of parent company eBay, which prohibits a wide variety of products from being sold on the site, including human body parts, alcohol and stolen property. But while eBay's ban on selling used airbags makes sense, some users say prohibitions against using PayPal funds to pay for, say, a mouse pad bearing a picture of a movie star violates their right to use their money as they please. Merchants and users are livid that PayPal is instituting such stringent controls. Some online retailers are concerned that the new restrictions will hurt their businesses, since PayPal has become a de facto standard in online payments. [Full story: PayPal Tightens Transaction Reins - Wired News]
I came across this old, but interesting, article, and thought you would find it useful too -- PROMO Magazine salutes 50 products, services, and properties making the most noteworthy marketing waves. The editors of PROMO Magazine observe countless promotions from numerous brands each month. For the first time, we've decided to sift back through 18 months of coverage to select the brands that consistently have been doing the best job in those three areas: concept, execution, and results. In most cases, the brands chosen make the grade in all three. But we've also credited a few either for the originality of their strategy, and some others for generating strong results with tried-and-true formulas. [Full story: 50 Best-Promoted Brands - PROMO Magazine]
Google has partnered with two online-advertising networks to display pay-for-performance text ads across sites affiliated with the networks--a move aimed at rapidly expanding the search giant's marketing business. In the last month, Google's AdWords, or text-link, ads have started appearing on sites belonging to Web publishers that are members of major ad networks, including Fastclick and Burst Media--which combined represent sales of ad space on nearly 24,000 sites. Google said it started syndicating ads to Fastclick and Burst, among others, as part of a test of its newly minted service to place text ads on pages selected for their relevance to a marketer's products or services. [Full story: Google, ad networks team on text ads - CNET News]
The boom in e-commerce is rapidly changing the way Americans buy and sell goods, but not all retailers are buying into the revolution. In fact, companies with major investments in brick-and-mortar operations are doing all they can in many cases to throw up brick walls to thwart small, upstart e-commerce rivals. To combat the trend, e-commerce companies from mom-and-pop shops to Ebay are appealing to Congress to intervene. The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection held hearings last fall and its chairman, Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, R-La., has introduced a bill to address the problem. The measure flatly prohibits state regulation of commercial transactions of goods and services conducted over the Internet. [Full story: Brick-and-mortar fire - CBS MarketWatch]
Hewlett-Packard recently unveiled its VEDA (virtual environment design automation) project to the press. The OpenGL and XML-based application is used as a visualization database that can be viewed in 3D to create online stores that you can walk through on your monitor, browsing through rooms of items sorted by your category of choice. Inspired by first-person video games, the demo showed some eerily similar qualities to shooting games like Doom and Quake. The demo simulated a trip through HP's product catalogue including cameras and other materials that could be viewed 360-degrees. The virtual store could also be approached at the floor level or from a third-person overhead advantage point, allowing the user to skip to other sections without getting lost. While the application could currently be used as a plug-in on a standard Web browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape, the short-term solution is to put the database on a CD first. Currently, the Lab plans testing the system in the real world with retailers like Wal-Mart. [Full story: HP Thinks in 3D for Web Browsing - Ecommerce Guide]