Bolstered by Internet advertising—particularly social media and online video—global ad spend growth is forecast to strengthen over the next three years, rising from an estimated 3.3% growth in 2012, to 4.1% growth in 2013 and 5.6% growth in 2015, according to projections by ZenithOptimedia. more

From Nov. 22 to 26, 2012, some 50 million tweets related to Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping were generated, with peaks of nearly 100 tweets per second, according to a report by DataSift. more

Today, we've launched a far simpler and cleaner homepage that we think helps visitors make sense of MarketingProfs and directs them efficiently and easily to the content they are looking for. more

Content marketing continues to be an integral strategy for B2B companies; however, objectives for content strategies are shifting toward thought leadership and educating the market, according to a survey from Curata. more

Over the years, many have augured the death of email, most recently foretelling that social media would make email obsolete. Nevertheless, for marketers, email remains an invaluable, even indispensable, tool. And this infographic from Eloqua spells out why. more

Traditional face-to-face tactics are still fundamental for SMB marketers: Personal relationships and networking (95%), tradeshows and industry events (89%), and in-person events (86%) rank as the most popular marketing tactics for finding new customers, according to a survey of small and midsized businesses conducted by Forrester Consulting for Act-On Software. more

The differences between search and social media marketing are many, but both are essential in today's marketing. The trick is to know which to use when and how to combine their power for maximum effect. more

When you want your target audience to take a particular action, including on Facebook, you must ask them to do it, according to a study by Dan Zarrella for HubSpot that explored how various call-to-action phrases impact the engagement of Facebook users. more

Before we can effectively communicate with our customers, we need to get their attention. According to Jeff Bander of EyeTrackShop, this means that when evaluating the effectiveness of our ads or calls-to-action or emails or whatever, we need to answer the question, "Did they see them?" more

On Black Friday (November 23), myriad holiday shoppers avoided the crowds at brick-and-mortar stores in favor of their Web browsers. Some 57.3 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, up 18% from the same day in 2011, according to data from comScore. more

Consider this: Three-quarters of the world's population has a mobile phone, and within the next two years the number of mobile subscriptions will outnumber the number of people. more

Buoyed by emerging "native" ad formats, US social media advertising revenues are forecast to reach $9.2 billion in 2016, up from an estimated $4.6 billion in 2012, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.2% over the five-year forecast period, according to BIA/Kelsey's US Local Media Forecast. more

Cyber Monday (Nov. 26) will celebrate its seventh anniversary in 2012, and consumer motivation for shopping on the day synonymous with the best online deals continues to grow in popularity, according to a survey from PriceGrabber.com. more

More than half of Americans (57%) are expected to shop from the comfort of their own computer and mobile screens this Cyber Monday; moreover, consumers will use social media for finding discounts (57% of consumers), reading reviews (51%), and finding gift ideas (49%), according to Radium One. more

Ellen Valentine, product evangelist at Silverpop and my guest this week on Marketing Smarts, has an interesting perspective on the perennial tension between Marketing and Sales: Technology is to blame! And it's likely the solution, too... more

Geography can play a big role in influencing e-commerce performance measurements such as conversion rate and average order value, according to a report by Monetate, which analyzed a random sample of more than 100 million online shopping experiences for the third quarter of 2012. more

Advances in ad technology have helped drive dramatic increases in digital video spending in 2012: 97% of surveyed video buyers (agencies, brands, and trading desks) say their video ad budgets have grown 27% in 2012 over 2011 levels, and most expect the momentum to continue into 2013, with video budgets ... more

With the holiday season all but here, more small business owners are making Small Business Saturday an integral factor in their holiday sales plans, according to a survey from American Express and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. more

Only a small number of companies are known for continually producing fresh thinking, and fewer still engage multiple business divisions from within the company to develop innovative ideas, according to a new study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Oracle. more

To better understand holiday shoppers and their attitudes about online tools and channels, LivePerson conducted its 2012 Holiday E-Commerce Survey then highlighted its findings in an infographic. more

Among small businesses and nonprofits planning events in 2013, more than 8 in 10 (81%) say they plan to increase their use of mobile technology to market their events, according to Constant Contact's EventSpot survey. So far, however, most small businesses haven't invested in mobile technology for event marketing. more

Social networks overall have a growing and pervasive influence on the information technology (IT) purchasing process, despite the multiplicity of digital channels available to IT decision makers (ITDMs), according to studies from Forrester Consulting and Research Now. Moreover, LinkedIn has become an influential resource across the entire IT decision-making process, ... more

Are you happy with the quality and quantity of your leads? If not, your lead generation program likely needs a tune-up using the following five principles of lead generation. more

Marketers need to think and act more like executive producers, those people behind the scenes of movies and TV shows who spend all their time "trying to find the resources to create the right kind of content for the right audience," argues Andrew Davis. more

Some 86% of B2C marketers are using content marketing, employing 12 individual tactics on average; but, as is the case with B2B content marketing, B2C content marketers are struggling with the effectiveness of their content marketing, according to the findings of the first B2C content marketing study from MarketingProfs and ... more