Q&As

Online marketers in Western Europe will sell $97 billion worth of products and services in 2006, a 37% increase over last year, according to market research firm EMarketer.

XL World, a Romanian outsourcing company, plans to hire 200 English-speaking call center employees by November.

Six Flags is moving ahead with its Halloween-themed cockroach-eating promotion, saying the stunt is intended as good fun, despite a call from an international animal activist group to cancel it.

Nestlé USA taps YouTube for a Butterfinger contest dangling a grand-prize Ultimate Mobile Movie Studio package.

Campbell Soup Co. stars in an October sweepstakes with meal-assembly service Super Suppers.

It’s the Tupperware approach…applied to entertainment technology. TiVo is hoping try-and-buy parties, hosted by current subscribers, will spur usage among new prospects.

Today we meet Steve Mertel, who was recently promoted from senior account executive to vice president of the list brokerage division at Rubin Response Services Inc.

E-mail inbox providers blocked an average of 19.2% of permission-based commercial e-mail during the first half of 2006, according to e-mail deliverability concern Return Path.

The filters that are used to keep spam out of your inbox can also block legitimate emails. Deliverability becomes a problem when filters generate false positives, blocking as many as one in five legitimate emails.