MARCH 17, 2009
Outlook not so good?

Aside from searching for information, e-mail has long been the most popular activity online. But no more.
 
According to Nielsen Online, more people in the US and other leading digital countries worldwide are using social networks and blogs than e-mail.

top-five-online-sectors-worldwide

While search and destination sites remain the most popular online activities, social network and blog use exceeded that of e-mail, increasing their reach by 5.4 percentage points.
In addition, time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing at over three times the rate of overall Internet …

MARCH 11, 2009
Do your click-throughs measure up?
It may not be what you want to hear, but over the course of the year click-through rates vary.
According to a study of more than 10 billion banner inquiries across Europe from ADTECH (not to be confused with ad:tech), the average click-through rate fluctuates between 0.11% and 0.19%. Apparently, users click on display ads more frequently toward the end of the year, during the major online shopping period. The rate then restabilizes in January at 0.12%.
ADTECH found that the size of the …

As marketers begin to better understand how Web site optimization fits into overall campaigns, budget investments in search engine optimization (SEO) will grow at a higher rate each year, compared with other types of search marketing strategies, according to a recent report from eMarketer. 
The report, “Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics,” suggests that growth will decline for paid search from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013–while SEO growth will jump from 17.7% to 20.3%, respectively.
“Every company is losing some business because of the economy, whether they buy less, or …

Has Google really stopped growing?
According to Compete, Google lost a small percentage of the overall share of online searches in the US. The loss was absorbed by Yahoo!, Ask.com and AOL, all of which grew slightly.

For the past six months, Google’s search share has remained at 70%.
comScore data shows a similar trend. While the firm sees a different overall share of the search market, the top sites’ shares have remained mostly unchanged over the past six months.
Barring a merger, the US search market is not expected to change for the …

Jeffrey Grau, Senior Analyst
Online retail e-commerce will sink before it soars again.

eMarketer is now forecasting that US retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will contract by 0.4% in 2009, falling to $133 billion.
But—and here is the good news—as the economy improves, online sales will return to the double-digit growth rates seen prior to 2008.
Growth will come from online buyers who shift a greater share of their discretionary spending from stores to the Web. Pent-up consumer demand, especially among affluent online shoppers, will provide an additional sales boost.
By 2012, e-commerce sales …