There are actually two separate but related businesses represented by the website -- the AIM Group (Advanced Interactive Media Group) and Classified Intelligence, which focuses exclusively on interactive classified advertising. (clients include WashingtonPost.  Newsweek Interactive, Hearst Newspapers, Tribune Publishing, and Homestore.)

The Aim Group concentrates on four Key areas:

· Marketing and business development
· Media e-revenues -- what they are, how to generate them
· Research about interactive media for publication or proprietary use
· Strategic planning in interactive media for senior executives

Boasting an impressive array of clients, the two firms appear to bring a great deal of common sense to their consultancy. The site is well worth a look. It features a variety of free reports as well as the opportunity to make modest investments in useful intelligence. The reports require that you register but, if you look closely enough at the website you'll find that registration gets you on the mailing list for CIR. We think their approach is clever:

It's available free, but we do request that you to register. If you prefer not to register, please just put "bogus@bogus.com" (or anything else) in the e-mail box below and it's yours for the taking anyway. We'll be launching a new free newsletter -- three monthly ideas about generating new revenue in interactive media. If you'd like to receive it, you'll get it automatically as a result of registering; if you'd prefer not to receive it, un-check the "Yes I would" box and we'll keep you off the list.

The free newsletter (launching this summer) will be a monthly newsletter about interactive media revenue --- specifically, newspapers, broadcasters and other media that have successful "case studies" in packaging print / broadcast / online / wireless, etc., to generate significant new revenues. Download one of their reports, get on their list and you'll receive it monthly.

Their other newsletter, The Classified Intelligence Report (CIR), is only available to clients. It arrives as an Adobe PDF attachment to an email every couple of weeks or so. A three issue trial subscription is available to our readers (mention that you saw it in the Electronic Recruiting News)  and worth reviewing. CIR is an incredibly insightful compendium of recent news in the various on-line classified advertising markets. That means that you get a bundle of automotive, auction, online content sales and real estate news bundled in with their perspective on the Recruitment Classifieds. It's nicely formatted, well written and easy to digest.

In some ways, AIM/CIR competes directly with us for mind-share and consulting business. As we hope you'd expect, we're delighted to discover articulate and intelligent competition in our world. There is relatively little of it. By leaps and bounds, AIM/CIR is the brightest spot in the traditional media side of our industry.

 -John Sumser