In a recent phone conversation, Resonate CEO Bryan Gernert explained Insights Driven Media derives, appropriately enough, “insights based on values.” The first goal, he said, is “to learn the values of what drives a person. They don’t define themselves as a demographic. They define themselves based on how they view the world.”

But, Gernert explained, his company couldn’t figure out what people value and what influences whose online behavior simply by looking at numbers. “Can you get to people’s values based on click-through data? We decided that’s not possible.” So, Resonate surveyed “tens of thousands of people” in sessions “20 to 25 minutes long” in order to learn what their priorities are and where they go on the web. That line of questioning positioned Resonate to be able to imagine what a potential customer might be thinking about during the process of buying a product. “When you look at a product for your family,” he said, by way of example, “what are the things you look for?” All of this ideally allows advertisers to connect with internet users who belong to their desired audience. And as the stats suggest, it seems to actually work, compared to the existing third-party methods. “Not only have we out-performed in affinity and awareness,” Gernert said, “but we outperformed in click-through.”

Looking to the new year, Gernert said Resonate would be getting back to its political-advertising roots with the 2012 election, but with Insights Driven Media, he sees “big opportunity in major brands.” They’ll be, he said, “working with agencies, but [also] working directly with clients.” Going forward, it’ll be interesting to see the broader ramifications of these methods.

This kind of instant access is becoming an asset to consumers, publishers and advertisers, providing unprecedented ways to communicate and interact with one another in ways no other medium can offer. Monetizing this viewership is an unparalleled opportunity. However, users are quickly becoming complacent to the onslaught of online advertising. No one has perfected a way to accurately target users to create a more personal advertising experience, which has alienated users and is causing a rift in customer loyalty due to fears of what this new level of access means for personal privacy.

Enter AdTruth™ – a company looking to tackle the concerns that cookie-based, location-based, behavioral and audience targeting has created by:

• Putting control back in the hands of the consumer
• Increasing customer loyalty
• Maintaining the ability for media to deliver quality, tailored advertisements across all web-enabled devices.

The company was started by Ori Eisen, founder and chief innovation officer of online fraud protection company 41st Parameter and former director of worldwide fraud at American Express. Ori has spent years and millions of dollars in research to develop DeviceInsight ™, a patented technology used by the top financial institutions, travel and e-commerce sites to battle online fraud. This research uncovered unsettling trends where customer challenge rates were increasing while the viability of cookies was rapidly decreasing. Indeed, the writing was on the proverbial wall: Cookies were beginning to crumble.

This discovery gave birth to the idea of using the DeviceInsight technology to provide increased transparency, adherence to privacy and cookie-less tracking/targeting in the online ad space. This potent and highly effective device recognition technology has proven excellent for finding and stopping the fraudulent “bad guys,” and should be repurposed to help the online ad industry, which has been plagued with HTTP and Flash cookie degradation, growing privacy legislation in both the U.S. and E.U. and tracking efficacy with mobile. Cookies were not the only solution and could not be depended on long-term; it was obvious that media had to evolve.

Building a team of ad industry professionals, a new version of the technology and a subsidiary company was created, and AdTruth embarked on presenting their solution to 67 key players within the industry landscape, receiving over 50 immediate requests to pilot the technology. The technology was then presented to lawyers in Germany, where cookies are opt-in only, and to the FTC, and both greeted the solution with wide acceptance and enthusiasm.

AdTruth’s solution recognizes the DNT (Do Not Track) flag – a privacy solution presented by Mozilla (Firefox Browser) and recently adopted by all major browsers and Internet companies who are part of the W3i to allow for greater user choice in conjunction with other tools like the OBA (Online Behavioral Alliance) AdvertisingOption Icon offering. This allows the user’s privacy choices to truly be honored with this solution.

AdTruth is so unique because of its on-premise, server-side integration into a client’s existing data center infrastructure with no additional hardware requirements. This allows for increased speed while leaving no residue on the user’s device. With concentration on no latency or additional calls, those leveraging the growing valueof Real-Time Bidding (RTB) will find this extremely valuable. The solution augments the use of cookies for display advertising and provides substantially more visibility of mobile devices.

AdTruth announced their first client in November, Steelhouse Media, and has several ongoing pilots and new partnerships developing both in the US and EU. All in the mobile and display landscape are welcome to become a client of AdTruth, particularly mobile players and those in Europe struggling with opt-in only cookie use for 2012, as those sectors are just not making as much as they could if they used this technology. “Once the word gets around on the efficacy, it will spread like wildfire,” said Ori Eisen.” We’re doing the right thing. We do it differently than anyone else.” With over 50 requests to pilot the technology alone, AdTruth is sure to become an industry staple and a true game changer.

With 685 (and counting) group sales and flash sale providers now flooding the market, some consumers are either beginning to tune out due to “deal fatigue” (“Oh great, another offer for 25% off a mani/pedi – ho hum,”) or they skip from discount to discount, never intending to “commit” to a merchant they’ve engaged with. Advertisers, on the other hand, are looking for more. Closing the deal is just step one in what they hope will be a long-term (and mutually beneficial) relationship between a consumer and their brand.

The question is, how can daily deal providers keep both of their constituencies happy, especially as the market becomes increasingly saturated? With the news not so great lately in the deals biz — reports of falling traffic for some of the big players, Facebook’s dropped attempt at offering local deals, and Groupon’s IPO woes abound — it’s now more important than ever for dealmakers to get it right.

The successful players will be those that excel at targeting the right offer, to the right audience, at the right time. My company recently conducted a study on daily deal email marketing strategies, and here’s what we learned about what’s working for successful industry frontrunners like zulily, Living Social, HauteLook and others, what’s not and how deal providers can do better:

Subject lines need to engage — fast. An advertiser is not going to do another daily deal if the first one isn’t successful, so don’t blow it at the subject line. One flash sale company we looked at was listing every brand name label included in its offers in the email subject line, making it hard for the reader to make sense of it at-a-glance. When you have mere seconds to capture attention, clarity is essential. Compose subject lines as if you were writing for a billboard on freeway, or the only click your email is going to get is the one that drags it to the trash.

One person’s junk is another person’s treasure. What does this old chestnut have to do with anything? It speaks to the importance of relevance. Even a 95% discount on carpet cleaning is meaningless to a person who has hardwood floors. But to a person who just moved into a condo with wall-to-wall in every room? Treasure. Never forget that relevance is step one in engaging the consumer.

Lazy targeting risks more than a missed sale. Some people might jump on a discount for Botox treatments. Others… might be offended. A poorly targeted offer risks more than a missed opportunity to make a sale, it can also put your advertising partner’s brand in a bad light.

Behavioral analytics are great, but smart targeting should go further. Nobody wants to be stalked with relentless offers for kitchen gadgets or baby gear after a one-time gift purchase. The real gems are the details that subscribers self report, like the fact that they are designer shoe addicts or that they eat out twice a week.

This type of data helps ensure that consumers get the most relevant (there’s that word again!) offers and that advertisers get to know valuable information about their market. (Tiffany’s, for example, might want to focus more on brand-conscious designer shoe people and less on the extreme bargain hunters.) Deal providers would be wise to provide multiple opportunities (and incentives) for subscribers to share their preferences.

Have good timing. Flash sale provider HauteLook uses burst email delivery to ensure that every message to its millions of subscribers arrives within the same 10 minute window every day. This enables them to emulate the experience of an offline sample sale, where women line up at the crack of dawn to get the best stuff and the brands that participate are viewed as “exclusive.” Consistent timing can thus create a sense of expectation and urgency that dramatically increases open rates, clicks and ultimately revenue.

The deal itself is only part of the equation. While a great deal is essential, keep in mind that, in most cases, the goal of your advertisers is repeat business. Your email copy should not only communicate the value of the deal, but also the value of the merchant that’s making the offer. Flash sale provider Gilt Groupe does a nice job of this by using beautiful imagery and engaging and evocative copy from the site’s “senior curator” to make the day’s top advertiser truly shine.

The daily deals industry must serve both consumers and the businesses that advertise well in order to maintain success and viability. If consumers are not seeing relevant, timely offers, they will disengage. Similarly, businesses offering deals must see positive ROI. A smart email strategy can help strike the right balance.

Because there’s something about Hulu’s latest consumer-facing video ad service that reminds me of NBC’s infamous amateur talent show. Say I’m trying to watch the latest episode of FX’s “Archer”, but before I can get to the so-wrong-it’s-right animated series, Hulu serves me one of those Geico ads with that frickin’ gecko. I really hate that Aussie-accented lizard. Lo and behold, on the top of the screen are three other ad choices from three different advertisers –

GONG!

Now I’m watching a Bing commercial, marveling at the fact that Microsoft’s advertising campaigns tend to be of such higher quality than its products.

Ad Swap is quite a leap from Hulu’s Ad Selector tool, which let users choose between three different ads by the same brand before the pre-roll played. As a user, this often felt useless because I typically saw all three of those video ads during a session.

However, Ad Swap lets Hulu users truly customize their ad experience to preferably view ads most relevant to them as consumers. The Ad Swap alternatives are based on previously submitted user information (“Is this ad relevant to you?), and likely fresh data from Ad Swap choices and lookalike Hulu users as well.

Of course, if viewers are curmudgeonly as me, they may just give a thumbs up to the ads that least irritate them (or ones that are actually entertaining) rather than products or services they’re likely to purchase. That isn’t a bad thing considering the metrics angle — Ad Swap gives advertisers a better idea what creative is clicking with users, and more specifically the demographics when used in tandem with the data available on Hulu’s viewers. (We’re talking anonymous audience segments, not specific, identifiable users.)

And even if certain consumers aren’t currently in-market for the product, as we note all the time on Adotas, brand awareness is of high importance at the top of the funnel, where video normally shows up. When the consumer does find him/herself in-market, what brands will immediately come to mind? Chances are, the ones with the most enjoyable advertising.

To jump on the earlier example, I’m more likely to watch Progressive’s Flo commercials rather than anything in the Geico docket for two reasons: 1. Flo is charming; and 2. I find Geico’s marketing bombardment near-oppressive. Incidentally, Progressive provides the car insurance for my POS band van.

GONG!

Advertisers who get gonged are not charged for the impression, but hopefully learn how often the ad was gonged and by what type of people in order to better tailor their creative and targeting efforts. (Stomp on that stupid lizard!)

Hulu’s introduction of Ad Swap is also an impressive signifier of the increasing role of video advertising and Hulu’s prominence in the space. A year ago, the chief complaint with Hulu was a lack of ad inventory — the same video ads played over and over during the sessions. Ad Swap suggests the on-demand video service has gotten past this issue, and now features an impressive variety and amount of brands reaching its viewers.

However, the commissioner also went on record to express the commission’s concerns over the collection and use of personal data of online users involve privacy issues that “go well beyond behavioral advertising.” The good news is that the FTC has made it clear that it would not be as concerned if targeted advertisements were the only issue. Focus now appears to be on the “widespread harvesting and tracking of online information that goes largely undetected by consumers, with potential privacy impacts across a wide spectrum,”  according to the commissioner.

Some real-world examples of online information that has the FTC’s attention, include: (1) Creating lists of elderly patients with Alzheimer’s disease to be used as “perfect prospects” for alternative therapy products marketing; (2) Utilizing social media chats for background checks by employers; and (3) Searching online for credit and debt information before providing bank loans.

In December of 2010, the FTC released its privacy protection preliminary staff report, which sought to focus on a broad range of potential misuses of online information and broad principles, such as privacy by design and clearer privacy notices. The Commission is currently assessing public comments in an efforts to formulate what it hopes to be meaningful recommendations in a final report.

Privacy and data security experts believe that the United States is at a competitive disadvantage with other countries by the lack of a national privacy framework. Currently, the United States and Turkey are the only countries of the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that do not have privacy framework laws in place.  Negative consumer reaction and the loss of consumer confidence in domestic privacy protection is a natural consequence of such things as mobile device providers using geo-location tracking technologies without having first obtained express consent.

Do-Not-Track Under Review, But What Will the Feds Do?

One of the most widely talked about suggestions in the aforementioned staff report is creating a “Do-Not-Track-Mechanism” which would, presumably, make it simpler for individual consumers to opt-out of having their online activities followed (or “tracked”) by advertisers and other third-parties. It appears that the FTC is currently chewing on how to define what exactly “tracking” involves and what the details of a privacy framework bill should include.

The FTC commissioner states that “although allowing self-regulatory schemes to control tracking through commonly accepted best practices could be an acceptable solution, the various industry players are not necessarily speaking the same language when it comes to what should be considered tracking or what kinds of data should get special attention.” The Commission clearly believes that that are “commonly accepted practices” in the online business sector that would not be accepted by consumers if they had effective notice.

While the foregoing may, in fact, be the case, it is beginning to appear that Congress has, at least temporarily, backed-off privacy protection legislation. There has be a lot of talk this year regarding the Obama administration’s call for a “Privacy Bill of Rights” law. However, the passage of a national data breach notification bill appears more likely, given the inconsistent patchwork of breach notification laws in more than 40 states.

In fact, on Sept. 22 the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a series of amended data breach and identity theft bills. The proposed legislation would require, for example, businesses to develop comprehensive data security programs that satisfy rules mandated by the FTC, and to establish procedures for minimizing the amount of personally identifiable information that they may retain – only as “reasonably needed.”

In the event of a security breach, notification to affected consumers would be required, unless it is determined that there is “no significant risk” that a security breach has resulted in, or will result in, identity theft, economic loss or harm, or physical harm to the individuals whose sensitive personally identifiable information was subject to the security breach.  In addition, individuals who intentionally conceal the fact that a data breach has occurred could face criminal penalties.

While applauding the goals of the proposed legislation, opponents such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have raised a number of concerns. These include increased and excessive costs for businesses due to perceived overly burdensome compliance regulations.

Of note, California recently amended its data breach notification law.  As of January 1, 2012, California businesses are required to provide notice to individuals of a breach involving their personal data, and must also notify the state Office of the Attorney General if the breach requires notification of more than 500 California residents.  For the first time, California will also require that notices to individuals include certain information, such as the type of information breached, the time of the breach, and a toll-free telephone number of major credit reporting agencies.

An experienced Internet attorney will be able to assist you to minimize exposure and protect against anticipated vulnerabilities to the privacy, security, or integrity of sensitive personally identifiable information, as well as any unauthorized access that could create a significant risk of harm or fraud to any individual.  The starting point should always be to design and implement reasonable written privacy and security policies, identify risks, inventory what you have and train employees on data security matters, and keep only what is reasonably necessary and secure it.

The Federal Trade Commission’s ‘Alleged’ Person of the Week

The most recent FTC action seeks to preclude deceptive “Fed Sites” that purport to guide consumers to financial services. On Sept. 14, the commission requested that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia stop a “lead generator” from impersonating federal consumer assistance agencies or pretending to be affiliated with them. In particular, the complaint (PDF) names Christopher Mallett, d/b/a Department of Consumer Services Protection Commission, U.S. Debt Care, World Law Debt, U.S. Mortgage Relief Counsel, govusdebtreform.net, usdebtcare.net, Worldlawdebt.org, and fha-homeloan.info.

According to the complaint, the defendants violated FTC Act §5, the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule, and Mortgage Assistance Relief Services Rule by soliciting indebted consumers and referring them to companies selling mortgage, tax and debt relief services with promises that their debts would be substantially reduced or eliminated.

During the referral process, Mallett allegedly:

1. Misrepresented his affiliations with the U.S. government or any federal, state, or local government agency, unit, or department;
2. Misrepresented that the services advertised on his websites were government-approved; and
3. Made deceptive debt relief claims that consumers who use the services promoted on his websites will have their debts substantially reduced, including by the specific percentages.

The FTC seeks a preliminary injunction and has acknowledged working with the Texas and Tennessee Attorneys’ offices.

Even if your whole audience is made up of people who are just dying to hear from you, they’re still not all exactly the same kind of people. So throughout your email marketing campaigns you will find that there are people of many different interests and likes in your mailing lists; so why not identify themand use segmentation to improve your results by sending appealing, targeted content.

Targeted messages can improve campaign performance, and in email marketing targeted messaging begins with segmentation.

Segment your email marketing subscribers (GraphicMail video) from Nick Eckert on Vimeo.

Segmentation is a really valuable practice, but you might need some help to get started

If you want to move away from the less effective blast emailing approach, which involves sending a single generic email to your whole list, you will need to start understanding the differences in your audience to convince them to open, engage and convert more often.

Why bother Segmenting?

There are risks to sending irrelevant or generalized emails, as these can encourage recipients to ignore your messages or mark them as spam – which can undermine your reputation and your entire marketing campaign.

Here are four steps to start segmenting your subscribers:

Step 1: Segment new subscribers when they arrive

For subscribers entering your program, you should start on the right foot by segmenting them as early as possible. Make sure your subscription forms allow subscribers to specify which segment they belong to. You can do this by asking them to select a topic, product or other area of interest.

Step 2: Apply the Basics

• Build a mailing list with additional information: If you want to segment, you will need a little more information than a list of email addresses to base your segments on. Even very basic details such as gender or age groups is enough to get started.

• Customize your content: Because you are speaking to individual needs, each new segment you target can multiply the amount of content you need – whether you are altering a single email for each segment, or launching targeted newsletters.

• Testing your sends: The only way to be sure your messages will improve performance is to test them against control groups. Monitor your responses (i.e. open rates, click-throughs and conversions) to make sure you are hitting a good chord for each segment.

Step 3: Define your Segments

Segmenting and sending targeted content is likely to take more of your time than just sending a generic email blast; so start small with one or two basic segments:

Active vs. inactive: Separate people who enjoy receiving your emails from the people who are less interested. For example, you can separate subscribers who have clicked link in your email within the last few months from those who have not. Then test different frequency or content options for the less active subscribers who are hurting your response rates.

Converters vs. non-converters: This approach can be used to separate subscribers who have already bought from you from those who have not. GraphicMail has a Google analytics integration that allows you to do this. Knowing a customer from a prospect makes a big difference in how you should be pitching your products and services, for example; whether you should be trying to sell them on more costly advanced products as opposed to entry-level offerings.

Step 4: Send test messages to the segments

It can’t be over-emphasized that you need to A/B test your emails to adjust your messaging for each segment. Testing will reveal the best approach for each group and this will help you avoid over-emailing subscribers who are less interested in the message.

Cross-published at the GraphicMail blog.

In particular, Rocket Fuel has added cross-channel (display, video, social and mobile) capabilities and the option to employ multiple survey questions to its Real-Time Brand Optimization (RTBO) technology. Launched last April, RTBO uses responses to in-banner surveys (powered by partner online brand effectiveness platforms) to fine-tune audience targeting in real time and focus on consumers more likely to respond.

In addition, Rocket Fuel has incorporated 2 million audience targeting data points and 3,000 new data points across user attributes such as demographics, psychographics, past purchases, lifestyles and interests. Rocket Fuel has also integrated Nielsen’s NetEffect into Brand Booster 2.0, allowing clients to see how online campaigns are affecting offline purchases tracked within Nielsen’s Homescan Consumer Panel.

“Brand advertisers have been between a rock and a hard place for years — they want to use online advertising to drive offline sales, but the majority of media targeting and optimization tools are concerned solely with online clicks and conversions,” said Richard Frankel, president of Rocket Fuel. “With this next generation of our brand platform we are enabling brands to reach the right customers at the right time and across all digital channels to favorably affect brand sentiment.”

VAR KMCID=’Z9iGGN1n1-zeVqbgzrlKkl39hiY’; if(typeof(_kmil) == ‘function’)_kmil();

That’s the contents of the global identifier variable KMCID set when a user hit any site using KISSmetrics’ tracking technology (such as Hulu or Spotify) before July 29 and the third-party script https://i.kissmetrics.com/i.js was loaded. The identifier went into a user’s cache and was impervious to user privacy tools such as cookie-blocking and private-browsing modes. Targeting through eTags had not only arrived, but been in practice by major publishers for some time.

Ashkan Soltani, previously a technologist at the Federal Trade Commission Division of Privacy and Identity protection, has published a technical addendum to a recent report accusing KISSmetrics of using eTags for user tracking that found 31 sites (including Hulu, GigaOm, Spotify, SEOmoz and SlideShare.net) using KISSmetrics’ e-Tag code prior to July 29, and 515 sites using KISSmetrics currently “in a fashion that indicates they were likely also have been respawning until this functionality was disabled.”

While KISSmetrics also appeared to be respawning cookies using HTML5 storage space and Flash cookies, the e-Tag accusation is the most serious because it represents tracking companies’ most significant attempt to circumvent user privacy controls, and may have drastic consequences for a behavioral advertising community already under intense federal scrutiny.

But it gets more complicated… And a lot uglier, as Soltani has broken down the very messy details of the matter.

Quick Flashback

On July 29, Wired’s Ryan Singel detailed the latest findings of privacy researchers Soltani, Chris Hoofnagle, Nathan Good, Mika Ayenson and Dietrich J. Wambach, an update of a 2009 report that discovered numerous publishers respawning HTTP tracking cookies through the use of Adobe Flash cookies (officially known as local shared objects, or LSOs). The new report discovered that the use of Flash Cookies was down, but tracking firm KISSmetrics was empowering numerous publishers to drop cookies in user caches.

Following the report’s release, Scott A. Kamber’s law firm — which has led the charge on about every online privacy lawsuit, including the one that racked up a $2.6 million settlement from Clearspring and Quantcast last year for their use of Flash cookies — filed suit against KISSmetrics, Hulu and a slew of other publishers using KISSmetrics’ e-Tag tracking technology. Although CEO Hitten Shah initially told Singel in the Wired story that the cache cookie assessment was correct, Shah came out with guns blazing in a company blog responding to the charges. In particular, he claimed that KISSmetrics had never used ETags or other “persistent” technologies for tracking purposes.

The weekend after the initial Wired story appeared, KISSmetrics amended its privacy policy to work with browser do-not-track technology and removed any references to the eTag technology from the “How It Works” page. As of July 31, Hulu and KISSmetrics had ceased respawning cookies.

The Trouble With Unique IDs

Because KISSmetrics uses the same first-party cookie — a unique identifier — for the same user on all websites that use KISSmetrics’ tracking technology, in theory KISSmetrics could track individuals across any of these websites (and make a killing in the expanding third-party data market).

KISSmetrics claims it was not doing this. Even without KISSmetrics as a mediator, publishers could trade or buy information about unique users from one another based on the code — publishers are increasingly annexing their data to provide more alluring targeted audiences so they can garner higher CPMs.

“Since the unique identifiers are included the actual URL and not the cookie headers… I can observe their transmission to KISSmetrics servers and suspect each will generate a log entry on their systems,” Soltani writes. “Unless all log data is immediately deleted or truncated, it’s likely that this cross-domain browsing history is available on their systems, unhashed.” He admits that because he has no access to KISSmetrics’ back-end systems, he can’t be conclusive about this practice.

However, KISSmetrics claims that the use of the same unique (and anonymous) identifier was used to cut down on bandwidth use while increasing performance speed; when the IDs came to KISSmetrics, they were instantly “translated into unique identifiers” for each publishing client.

But that doesn’t defuse Soltani’s other point — the publishers themselves follow track users and share data with or sell to each other against user wishes.

The Big Picture

As the online behavioral advertising industry is struggling to convince the Internet-using public that it can regulate itself, the entry of eTags into the tracking fray was a pretty damning indictment against self-regulation.

Given the zeal with which companies continue to develop tracking technology that circumvents user-initiated privacy controls, how can the online advertising industry be trusted to regulate itself regarding user data?

As Bob Garfield put it in AdAge, “Nice work, morons. Way to strangle the goose that lays the golden egg.”

Major retail clients clients including PETCO, Urban Outfitters and Brookstone use Monetate’s technology to concurrently run numerous targeted trial campaigns with personalized web page content and monitor outcomes in real time. Check out this demo of the testing service:

On Thursday, the NASDAQ composite dropped 136.68 points yesterday for a falloff of 5%. At press time, the index is down around 200 points or 7% for the week, though Friday was hovering around breaking even.

Two of the companies in ad tech hit hardest are ValueClick (VCLK) and Interclick (ICLK), which were down 13.83% and 12.97% for the week, respectively. Until recently, both companies were having terrific runs. In July, ValueClick hit its highest price in three years while Interclick’s stock reached its highest mark in its less-than-two-year lifespan.

ValueClick’s stock actually took a 13% tumble on Wednesday alone, a day after the company announced it had acquired retargeting operation Dotomi and announced second quarter earnings — revenue up 26% to $125.1 million and earnings per share at $0.21. Both those numbers beat estimates, so you might be wondering  what was up with the major selloff — looks like investors weren’t happy with the Dotomi acquisition, particularly because the deal was 55% cash and 45% stock

Closing Aug. 3 at $16.52, VLCK fell further to $16.09 on opening on Thursday before tumbling another 6.66% to close at $15.42. Opening on Friday at $15.12, the stock was up 0.91% to $15.56 as of press time (1:21 PM EST). Better, but a bit of a drag considering that the company started the week around $18.50.

Source: Google Finance

In July, VCLK reached $18.78, its highest price since June 2008. The stock peaked at $32.68 back in May 2007.

Interclick isn’t announcing second quarter results until next Wednesday (after the market closes), but its stock began to slide late Tuesday and carried on into Wednesday, falling to $6.40 before an afternoon recovery that lifted ICLK to above $7 (actually gaining 1% for the day). However, the stock fell 9% on Thursday to close at $6.38. Opening at $6.44 on Friday, ICLK was down 2.12%to $6.24 as of press time (1:21 PM EST).

Following the company’s first quarter earnings report, which generally met analyst expectations, the stock dipped 5.7% over 18 days. Hopefully that’s not an omen for next week — even if it is, the stock ramped mightily during June and July.

Source: Google Finance

Over the last six months (between February and June), Interclick’s stock had risen about 42%, accelerating from $5.50 to a peak of $8.90 in early July — the highest the stock had reached since Interclick’s IPO in November 2009. However, the stock fell close to 9% in July, with serious dips coming after Piper Jaffray initiated the stock with a neutral rating and the launch of Genome, Interclick’s self-service audience recommendation and planning platform.

Other kinds of advertising companies are taking a bath too. Interpublic has witnessed a 13.66% Omnicom Group has fallen 6.71% over the week to around $42.25 as of press time, while DG FastChannel (which bought rich media ad server MediaMind in mid-June) has slumped around 17.5% to 23.65 as of press time.