INTERNET ADVERTISING REVIEW Issue 1.1           November 1994

ISSN 1195-9622

-- A new Internet newsletter written by the publisher of The
Internet Business Journal, Michael Strangelove.

INTERNET ADVERTISING REVIEW will examine cultural issues
surrounding Internet-facilitated advertising, explain
advertising tools, techniques, and trends, and review the
variety of advertising that appears on the Internet. The
intention behind this free column is to inform the Internet
business community of the responsible and effective use of the
Internet as an advertising vehicle.

Internet -- The Next Target of Advertising Firms

Internet facilitated advertising is quickly becoming the most
significant new development within the industry. The Internet
community is slowly waking up to the fact that they are the
next target of advertising firms, and the business community
is beginning to make both cautious and careless use of the Net
for advertising their products and services.
This inaugural column will examine an innovative form of
passive Internet advertising found in the new network-
distributed publication, Meta.

Meta -- A Model Example of Passive Internet Advertising

Most of the innovative advances in Internet-facilitated
advertising are being made by entrepreneurial companies small
enough to adapt quickly to the new multimedia opportunities
presented by an Internet-coming-of-age. The latest entry into
this virtual land of marketing opportunities is the new
monthly journal Meta, an electronic magazine dedicated to
covering issues of importance to the Internet community (Issue
1.1 September 1994). Editor and publisher Mike Linksvayer
(mlinksva@netcom.com) describes the concept behind Meta as
follows:

"The idea of publishing Meta came to me in March of this year.
It was a simple and obvious idea: a high-quality, freely
redistributable periodical in electronic format, with paid
writers to ensure quality, and revenues generated from
advertising. So simple, so obvious, and yet it had not
already been done. But then, the factors that permit a
magazine like Meta have only appeared very recently."

The factors that have made Meta an attractive publishing model
are said to be a portable document format (freely
redistributable electronic document software packages); a
suitable method of distribution (the Internet), and; a large
audience (the Internet again).

Meta appears to be off to a good start, with eight advertisers
purchasing approximately six out of thirty-three pages. The
advertisers in the first issue were Clark Internet Services,
Hawthorne Exchange, InfoMagic, Linux on Disk/Tape, Luminous
Software, Multimedia & Video Center, SoftLock Services, Inc.,
and Trans-Ameritech Enterprises, Inc.

Meta is distributed in Farallon's Replica for Windows
(version 1.0), one of many available electronic document
software packages, and as a PostScript file. The Replica
version comes in a self extracting file with the viewer
included and is well worth taking the time to retrieve and
install. I was sufficiently impressed with Replica's easy
installation and reasonable look and feel to call 1-800-814-
5000 (US and Canada) and order a demo diskette.

Linksvayer has made the focus of Meta the Internet itself:
"Meta is aimed squarely at the Net community. It focuses on
issues and stories that are of particular interest to everyone
on the Internet, especially issues that are under-reported or
misrepresented by the mainstream media, such as cryptography,
electronic publishing, free software development, intellectual
property, Internet commercialization and privacy." The first
issue focuses on free software development.

Regarding electronic publishing, Meta publisher Linksavayer
notes that "It does not take an econometrics Ph.D. to figure
out that electronic publishing is going to explode over the
next few years. The traditional publishers don't yet
understand the technology or the Internet and don't have
the vision, so right now, net-aware entrepreneurs have a
unique opportunity."

With its first issue, Meta has made an innovative contribution
to the development of Internet-facilitated publishing and is
certainly worth taking a few minutes to retrieve and install.
It would be nice to see the text made available in low ASCII
on the Net, as the minimal design capabilities of Replica do
not add much to this publication. The one major complaint I
have of Meta's design is that the pages are clearly designed
on the basis of a print publication. The result of this is
that one can never see a full "page" of Meta within the
Replica viewer, unless it is reduced in size to the point where
it becomes unreadable. Printing the issue is not a solution,
as thirty-three pages of text and graphics represents a heavy
drain on a toner cartridge. The publisher should give thought
to creating a layout more suited for screen viewing then
printing. I look forward to improved design when Meta appears
in Adobe's Acobat format later in 1994.

Content is Strength for Internet Success

Nonetheless, Meta's content is its strength, and the article
"The Value of Advertising", by R. David Murray on 
O'Reilly and Associates new network service: the Global Network
Navigator (GNN) is the first critique I have seen of the GNN
Marketplace service ("was disappointed"). On Internet and
advertising, Murray comments:

"I wish various loud members of the Internet community would
get off this "advertising is bad" kick. What
you are looking for determines whether given advertising is
useful or useless. In the same way, what you are looking for
determines whether non-advertising information is useful or
useless. The problem of "good advertising"
from the consumer's point of view (finding out quality
information about products you need when you need it) is no
different from the other information discovery problems the
Internet community has been grappling with for years.
Let's stop lambasting advertising as some great evil,
and start treating it as what it is: potentially valuable
information."

Meta is not merely another Internet-facilitated publication,
but is certain to become a leading example of the best of
Internet advertising methods: passive, non-intrusive, and
graphical.

Retrieving Meta

Meta can be obtained via FTP to ftp.netcom.com in the
directory /pub/mlinksva/ or by sending e-mail to
mlinksva@netcom.com sendinfo as the subject. Meta is also
available by e-mail in uuencoded format.

INTERNET ADVERTISING REVIEW
Michael Strangelove
Mstrange@Fonorola.Net

Copyright (C) 1994 by Strangelove Internet Enterprises, Inc.
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