Ex 7th Level exec begins anew
Dallas Business Journal - by Jeff Bounds Staff Writer
NORTH DALLAS -- The former chief executive of 7th Level Inc. has formed a new Internet marketing and advertising firm.
Richard Merrick says his new venture, Postfuture Inc., will use animation, video and sound to supply consumers who sign up for the service with ads catered to their needs.
Merrick is steering away from the predominant form of online advertising, called "banner ads," which are essentially a block of text and graphics posted on part of a Web site. The idea is to lure consumers to click on the banner, which in turns links them to advertisers' Web sites.
Though they have their defenders, banners are receiving growing skepticism from advertisers, since few consumers seem to pay them much mind. By some accounts, only a thin percentage of consumers ever click on the banners, much less buy the products the advertisers are pushing.
"Advertising expenditures are increasing from $1.5 billion in 1998 to $6.7 billion in 2001," Merrick says. "Banner ads are going away, but advertising spending is increasing."
Some would dispute that, of course. Nonetheless, Merrick wants to avoid the banner-advertising issue by combining two current trends in online advertising. One, called "permission marketing," involves consumers signing up to receive ads targeted to their particular idiosyncracies.
In return, consumers are offered special discounts and other offers on products that interest them.
The other trend in question is creating ads that look more like television commercials or magazines. Postfuture might, for instance, send an e-mail to a subscriber telling them about special discounts on running shoes.
The missive could contain a link that, when clicked on, would launch a full-screen advertisement about the shoe, showing it from different angles.
Merrick currently has about 10 clients. He has done work for Infospinner, a Dallas software concern, as well as Nortel and Cinemanow.com, a spinoff of Trimark Pictures.
But to get clients, he must still find consumers willing to receive advertising. To do that, he is trying to find partners who can bring Postfuture's service to various consumers.
As part of that effort, Merrick will begin mailing out several thousand postcards next month to people in the industry "just to get the word out," he says. He also plans to launch an online magazine, called an "ezine," that looks at the history and future of marketing and communications. He expects the company's services to make it out to consumers in the first quarter of 2000.
In addition, he plans to rent lists that other companies have compiled of people willing to receive advertising.
And next year Merrick will launch a Web site that lets advertisers build and launch do-it-yourself campaigns to Postfuture's members.
"It becomes a rental model," Merrick says.
Merrick helped launch Richard-son-based computer-game maker 7th Level in the early '90s. The company struggled financially and internally, with sharp disagreements over whether it should focus on profitable shoot-em-up games or educational software. It finally decided to become a supplier of Internet software tools.
Merrick, who had run the company's technology operations, was named CEO last May following a management shake-up. He was at the helm when 7th Level merged with White Plains, N.Y.-based Street Technology, a maker of technology for running audio and video over the Internet.
Merrick left the firm in May, and started Postfuture soon after that.
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