Yesterday, advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi proudly announced that they had launched a new concept in advertising with their live banners. These banners could deliver news headlines and user-defined advertising messages through a Java applet.

Bruce Simpson, publisher of 7am News and developer of the 7am News Ticker says "I think Saatchi & Saatchi should do their homework before announcing they've done something new. 7am News has been delivering news headlines and advertising in this way since December 1996. We've also have a special news-enabled InfoAd^TM product that we've been selling for over 6 months."

It seems that others are also waking up to the potential of the Push-To-Page model originally developed by 7am News. Total News, another news-content aggregator has just launched its own Java news ticker with a notable similarity to the 7am offering.

"I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" says 7am's Simpson. "We have the advantage of having already built a huge network of ticker-equipped sites, over 6,000 at last count, and our ticker is being loaded around half a million times per day. These new entrants have a way to go before they catch us. We've got the benefit of maturity in our marketing and our technology. For instance, the Total News applet doesn't handle firewalls very gracefully" he says.

Simpson also hints to the launch of a new product he calls the 7am InfoConsole^TM. "We're going beyond the News Ticker with this new product. One problem with the ticker concept is that it can actually lead people away from your site unless you use framing - a decidedly unethical practice and something that has gotten other sites such as Total News into big trouble in the past. The InfoConsole uses a different model and it brings the news to the site carrying the InfoConsole rather than taking the viewer away from that site."

"The InfoConsole will be out very shortly and we've already had some significant interest from content-creators and publishers keen to use this vehicle for distributing their material" says Simpson. "The ticker is a great concept and our success with it proves that. However, 7am News has been built on innovation and while our competition are just discovering tickers, we've already created the next generation of Push-To-Page technology."

Disclosure: This EZine, Aardvark Net Industry News, is also published by Bruce Simpson, publisher of 7am News.

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