As Max Starkov writes in an article at Hotel Interactive, the hotel industry is the perfect candidate for managing customer relations via mobile devices. "Using the mobile space to provide intelligent, unobtrusive and highly personalized services convinces customers that this is their service," says Starkov. And one of the hot tools ... more

Display advertising is forecast to grow 13% in 2010 after a dismal performance in 2009 (down approximately 5% in the US), while US search advertising is forecast to grow 13%, up significantly from 2009's roughly flat year, according to research from JP Morgan. more

Mobile browsing accounted for 1.35% of all Web browsing worldwide in December, up some 20% from 1.12% in November, with Google's Android operating system the largest percentage gainer during the month, according to data from Net Applications' HitsLink Market Share more

"Links allow your readers to select which offer or detail they want to understand better or read more about, without distracting them with information that may not be useful," writes Maria Pergolino in a post at the Marketo blog. Another benefit: They also enable marketers to gauge a reader's interest ... more

Though US online advertising is forecast to decline 4.6% in 2009––the first drop since 2002––the recovering economy, combined with basic structural changes in how marketers and the public use media, will lead to growth in early 2010, according to eMarketer. more

According to research from SEMPO, more than 64 million US wireless subscribers surfed the mobile Internet in May 2009—almost twice as many as in the previous year. That accounts for more than 20% of the total US population, 28% of US wireless subscribers, and more than 40% of desktop Internet ... more

US adults spent an average of 13 hours a week online in 2009, off slightly from last year, when average weekly online use was 14 hours, according to a poll by Harris Interactive. However, usage varies greatly: 20% of adult Internet users are online for only two hours or less ... more

The television industry will close out 2009—a year dominated by shifting advertising budgets and a poor economy—with lower-than-expected revenues of $15.6 billion, a 22.4% decline from 2008, according to BIA/Kelsey. more

Major search engines now have their own image-search functions that provide image-search listings in regular Web-search results, writes Pandia Search Engine News in a recent article. And although searchers may have different reasons for using image-search engines, all of those searchers may be potential customers, subscribers, or readers. So, if ... more

The smartphone market will climb to 37% of global handset sales in 2014, expanding from 16% of market share in 2009 to 37% in 2014, with emerging markets driving the growth, according to Pyramid Research. more

Among the top 300 Web search terms, Facebook was the top-searched term overall in 2009, accounting for 0.67 percent of all searches, according to Experian Hitwise, which also found that Google has been the most-visited site of 2009. more

How will the world of personal branding, and business, evolve in the coming year? Here are William Arruda's top 10 predictions for 2010. more

When McDonald's launched its specialty coffees earlier this year, its banner ads inviting consumers to "McCafé Your Day" were all over the Web. Great branding, but does such online advertising send customers to local establishments? The short answer: When combined with search, it does! According to Christa Hoyland, editor of QSR Web, Google research ... more

In late October, Twitter launched its Lists feature, which might just improve your life in a panoply of organization-friendly ways. The new feature helps you sort your own contacts based on personal relevance, but—maybe more importantly—it also provides you with ready-made groups of people to which to target your messages. ... more

Americans can't live without the Internet and television; they prefer advertisements that are innovative and playful; and they are open to new technologies that monitor their media usage if privacy is ensured, according to a recent study by Synovate. more

Google continued to dominate search, accounting for 71.6% of all US searches in the four weeks ended November 28, 2009, a 1.4% increase from a month earlier, according to Experian Hitwise. Yahoo followed with 15.4% of searches, Bing with 9.4%, and Ask.com with 2.7%. The remaining 52 search engines accounted ... more

Annual global advertising expenditure will have declined 10.2% by the end of 2009––the worst annual drop in modern times––but is forecast to stabilize and grow 0.9% in 2010, according to projections by ZenithOptimedia. more

Nearly eight out of ten US mobile content users have difficulty trying to access content due to slow page loads, phone/interface issues, and irrelevant content, according to a recent study conducted by TNS Global on behalf of Xiam Technologies. Moreover, mobile users report that 27% of the time, they are ... more

The purpose of a pay-per-click (PPC) ad, says Nick Usborne, is "to match a thought in a reader's mind and then move that person forward to your landing page with a click." But here's the catch: You have to do it in 95 characters or less if you're writing a ... more

By 2013, the geotargeted display advertising market is forecast to reach $1.9 billion, up from the $879 million spent on banners in 2008—a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16%—according to BIA/Kelsey. more

Businesses are gearing up to increase their marketing spend on email marketing and social media in 2010, making those the top two areas of marketing investment in 2010, according to the just-released 2010 Marketing Trends Survey by StrongMail Systems. more

Business owner Fran Murdy presented all the symptoms of full-blown Search Overload Syndrome (SOS), Microsoft's term coined in its recent commercials for Bing, when he fessed up in a forum discussion not too long ago at InboundMarketing.com: "I'm in desperate need of help to find keywords for my business." Soon afterward, fellow ... more

Few things are as irresistible as a mobile game that lets players rack points up during waiting-room or bus-ride lulls. But if you're a brick-and-mortar shop, or a restaurant, there isn't much incentive for throwing another branded version of Tetris out into the ether. What to do, what to do? Solution: Hook up ... more

Despite a weak economy, the salaries of most SEO professionals have remained strong in 2009, according to SEMPO's Second Annual in-House Salary Survey. more

In a recent post at the Online Marketing Blog, Adam Singer summarizes Charlene Li's keynote at Search Engine Strategies San Jose last summer. Co-author of the business bestseller Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, and a MarketingProfs presenter, Li examines the intersection of search and social media. According ... more