When people click on your unsubscribe button, there's a good chance it takes them to a preference page where they can confirm the unsubscribe request, or adjust their subscription to a topic and frequency they prefer. But what about including an offer that tempts them to stay? In a post at ... more

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa set to begin on June 11, US Internet searches related to the World Cup during the week ended May 29, 2010 were up 10% from levels recorded a week earlier, and up 64% from a month earlier, according to Experian Hitwise. more

Most online consumers (53%) now own a smartphone or Web-enabled mobile device, and among them 35% say they participated in some type of mobile shopping in the previous 12 months, such as comparing products and prices, up from 17% who said so a year earlier, according to a survey from ... more

A few years ago, John W. Ellis wrote the post, "If Paid Search Isn't Working, Then You're Doing Something Wrong" at the Search Engine Land blog. Recently, now at his own blog, Ellis reviewed the article to see how current it was—only to find that it is still spot-on! "The fact ... more

Nearly seven in ten (69%) adult Internet users—or 52% of US adults—now use the Internet to watch or download video content, and 14% have uploaded video to the Internet—nearly double the 8% who did so in 2007—according to a report by the Pew Research Center. more

New digital and social media tools are more likely to be under the strategic and budgetary control of corporate PR and communications rather than marketing departments, according to a study by the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. more

In March, Facebook hosted 484 million unique visitors worldwide, up 22 million from February, per comScore. On average, people log in 11 times a month, meaning a big pile of people increasingly treat the site like home base for sharing and discovering what's cool and in and groovy. Good news for marketers: ... more

Social networks are the fastest-growing mobile content category, both via application and for browser access, confirming the increasing popularity of social networking via mobile devices, according to data from comScore's MobiLens service. more

Millennials are hard to sway using traditional advertising and media channels that don't promote interaction: Only 17.7% say their favorite TV spot has led them to purchase an advertised product, while nearly one-half (48%) say that word-of-mouth communications influence them more than TV advertisements, according to a study from Mr ... more

Some 30.3 billion videos were delivered to US Internet users in April 2010, down 3.0% from 31.2 billion in March, and 177.8 million people watched online videos during the month, down 1.3% from 180.2 million in March, according to comScore data. more

Newspaper websites in the top 25 markets continued to grow at rapid rate, reaching 83.7 million unique visitors in April 2010, up 10.1% from a month earlier, and up 15.0% from January 2010, according to data from comScore Media Metrix data released by Newspaper National Network LP (NNN). more

Total measured advertising expenditures reached $31.3 billion in the first quarter of 2010, up 5.1% from the same period a year earlier—the first increase in quarterly ad spending since the first quarter of 2008 and the largest gain since the first quarter of 2006—according to data from Kantar Media. more

Despite widespread consumer adoption of social media, advertisers on average allocated just 4% of their media spend to the channel in 2009, relying instead on traditional, proven online media choices that were in place before the economic downturn, according to data from interactive agency Razorfish. more

If we were to suggest plain text for your next email campaign, you'd probably laugh in our faces. "The superiority of HTML email to plain-text email for driving response has become an accepted truth in email marketing," says Mark Brownlow in a post at the Email Marketing Reports blog. "Alchemy ... more

In an article at MarketingProfs, Dan Skeen writes that search-engine optimization provides several return-on-investment measures with a greater potential impact on a company's bottom line than many traditional tactics. However, he notes, because SEO is less tangible than some other areas of marketing investment, it's often harder to clearly show ... more

The consumption of Internet video—content stored and distributed over Internet protocol (IP) architecture—is forecast to overtake the consumption of broadcast TV programming by 2020, according to a report by The Diffusion Group (TDG). more

Mitchell Harper of BigCommerce recently wrote a cool piece on Mashable detailing how companies can use YouTube to boost their brand SEO. Step One? Consider creating a YouTube channel, he advises: "Every video you post to your channel can be tagged and indexed, increasing the odds your brand name will ... more

Though most marketers understand the value of connecting with consumers on an emotional level, nearly two-thirds (62%) say their brand's messaging is focused on rational and functional elements rather than emotional benefits, according to a survey form the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). more

Over two-thirds of high-tech marketing professionals (68%) say lead generation is their top marketing priority this year and 74% cite social media as among the top emerging marketing channels for lead generation in 2010 and beyond, according to a Unisfair survey slated for release in late May. more

Does your marketing content tell buyers what they want to hear—or only what you want to say? Writing at the Marketing Interactions blog, Ardath Albee reports on a study that found content is relevant to a customer's needs only 42 percent of the time—and a lack of compelling content reduces ... more

Three-quarters of Americans (74%) say when a celebrity endorser gets involved in a scandal, how they feel about the brands that the celebrity endorses is not affected, according to a new Adweek Media/Harris Poll. Just over one in five surveyed consumers (22%), however, say they feel worse about the endorsed ... more

Apparently, nearly everyone is looking for a bargain these days, especially women: 93% of women age 16-54 who use mobile devices say they are always on the lookout for special offers; moreover, 68% of such women say they are interested in receiving discounts via their mobile phone, according to a ... more

Over one-half (57%) of surveyed US consumers say they plan to purchase an e-reader or tablet within the next three years—29% plan to purchase one within the next year—according to a study by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). more

...will go unnoticed by Google. That's what some search pundits are saying these days: To achieve smooth-and-easy SEO, you need to spell out who you are, plain and simple, for the search engines—even if it means inserting a keyword in your primary domain name. "[C]ore branding principles tell us that ... more

Time to start thinking "i" again—this time for the iPad. Like it or not, it's a mobile device, and 120,000 were preordered in the first 24 hours of its release in April. And as of May 3, iPad had already hit 1 million units sold, and 12 million iPad apps ... more