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Driven by a faster than expected rebound in the US advertising market and continued robust growth in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, worldwide ad expenditure is forecast to grow 3.9% in 2010, an upward revision of 1.0 percentage point from the 2.9% forecast issued in March 2010, according to Carat. more
In a post at Email Marketing Reports, Mark Brownlow presents a screenshot that looks like a page from a 19th-century novel: lengthy paragraphs filled with sentences of uniform length. That, he notes emphatically, is not how your email messages should look. "In fact, you wouldn't read the words if that was ... more
According to Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger, using the right words in the right way in your website copy will consistently help convert visitors to buyers while also determining "how well you rank in search engines and how much traffic you get." In a popular post at the blog, Clark offers ... more
Google Sites comprised the top-ranked online property in July with 178.4 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo Sites with 174.2 million, while BrightRoll Video Network led in comScore's July Ad Focus ranking with a potential reach of 96% of Americans online, followed by SpotXchange Video Ad Network with 93%. more
One in five US consumers age six and older (20%)—roughly 56.8 million people—say they have played a game on a social networking website in the previous three months, according to a report from The NPD Group. more
Higher spending small- to medium-sized business advertisers (SMBs) not only allocate more money to their advertising budgets than the other SMBs on average, but use over twice as many media channels in their marketing mix, according to a survey from BIA/Kelsey. more
"One click between email message and e-commerce is so ingrained for all of us—as both buyers and marketers—that it's almost nostalgic to think of using email solely to promote offline purchases," writes Stephanie Miller in an article at MarketingProfs. But that's exactly how Scotts Miracle-Gro—a company with no direct online sales ... more
According to Lee Odden, the SEO concept of "fresh content" has been distorted by a convoluted game of telephone—one person giving information to the next, each with his or her own interpretation, until the final person receives a definition quite unlike the original. "I'm sure the genesis was something like: Someone ... more
We love photographing food—local gems we hope to immortalize and share. Now there's an app for that! Inspired by Foursquare, Foodspotting lets users snap pictures of food and share the name and location via iPhones. It's a great way for iPhone users to find yummy dishes nearby. (Just think: Now you ... more
Google continued to dominate search in July, accounting for 71.43% of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ended August 1, 2010, while Ask's share of searches reached 2.32%, up 6% from June, according to Experian Hitwise data. more
From July 13 to 14, "Old Spice Guy" (towel-clad spokesman Isaiah Mustafah) responded to users' Old Spice references at YouTube. Short YouTube video clips featured OSG charming users with witty repartee. Links to the videos appeared on Twitter like that. The resulting user stats were impressive: Upload views at YouTube, over 83 ... more
Driven by gradual economic recovery, advances in digital technology, and secular shifts in business and consumer spending, total communications industry spending is on pace to increase 3.5% in 2010 and post a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8% from 2010 to 2014, reaching $1.4 trillion in spending by 2014, ... more
Some 178 million US Internet users watched online videos in July 2010 for an average of 14.7 hours per viewer, according to comScore Video Metrix. Though Google Sites continued to dominate online video viewing during the month, Facebook jumped one spot from its June ranking to become the third-most popular ... more
Social media can be an effective marketing tool for small businesses. However, different businesses have different needs and different reasons for adopting social media. Regardless of the reason, social media can serve as an efficient, low-cost marketing tool for businesses seeking to generate measurable business results. more
Consumers looking for local business information are increasingly turning to their mobile devices: The number of people who accessed Internet business directories on a mobile phone reached 17.3 million in March 2010, up 14% from the same period a year earlier, according to a study by the Yellow Pages Association ... more
When it comes to SEO, writes Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing, "Publishers have it easy: Make some changes, site- or server-wide, and you're a hero." This isn't quite the case, though, for writers and editors. "Editorial staff," he continues, "have to apply sound SEO and online writing practices to every ... more
Driven by increasing smartphone adoption, worldwide sales of mobile devices to end-users reached 325.6 million units in the second quarter of 2010, up 13.8% from the same period a year earlier, according to Gartner. more
Using Twitter for brand-building? Hardcore users know one personal account is a full-time job, so nurturing a bunch of client/brand accounts just might make you crazy! But lucky for us, applications that can help simplify your brand-building tweets are showing up almost daily. Case in point: Tweet Adder. This desktop application, used ... more
American businesses spent $5 billion reaching the Hispanic market in 2008, and for good reason. By 2013, Latinos will control 10 percent—or a staggering $1.4 trillion—of the country's buying power. So reports Chanin Ballance in an article at MarketingProfs. "That puts Hispanics ahead of all other minority groups, including African ... more
In a post at the Bronto blog, Julie Waite says you may know Chick-Fil-A recently introduced a Spicy Chicken Sandwich. "What you may not have heard," she notes, "was that they ran a special invite-only event promotion to taste the new sandwich (for free!) well in advance of its launch ... more
Want to increase traffic to your site? A recent article at the SEO Traffic Spider recommends using social-media optimization (SMO) as a highly effective method for search-engine optimization of any website. As the name implies, you optimize your site by advertising it through social-media sites and online communities. According to the ... more
In less than five years, more than 50 percent of users at any given time will be accessing the Internet from a mobile device, according to Morgan Stanley. Frankly, it feels like that number is already being reached in the business world. After all, Internet-ready mobile devices are ubiquitous, and the ... more
The best path to the heart is still the stomach, and Nabisco apparently knows it. The company recently began mining Twitter to find customers who love its Wheat Thins crackers and give a lucky few of them the surprise of their lives. Here's how the company and its agency of ... more
It's been a long time coming, writes Dylan Boyd at Email Wars, but with "new systems of marketing automation we are finally gaining ground to creating trigger-based campaigns on actions, behavior and timing." Boyd provides a thorough rundown on various trigger-based campaigns you might employ. Here are a few highlights to ... more
Smartphones have become an integral part of Twitter and Facebook use: 33% of smartphone owners who use Twitter say they read tweets primarily via their smartphone, and 33% of such consumers send tweets primarily via their mobile device, according to a survey from Compete. more
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