Internet Retailer has released their latest survey on the state of search engine marketing: oh, the beautiful data. Of the merchants surveyed, the largest group (37.9%) said that over half of their online marketing budgets are spent on SEM. Also in the good news category, the largest group (30.2%) said that more than half of their online revenue is attributable to search engine marketing.
The survey asked the merchants for a general status chec

Now that E-consultancy is fully on my radar - and in my inbox - I’m impressed by the amount of free content that comes out of this UK marketing resource.
Today, our readers can head on over to their site and pick up a free copy of their “Online PR Briefing“, which covers: What is Online PR?
Which department or agency should own Online PR?
SEO and Online PR
Importance of bloggers
Affiliates and Online PR
Brands and Forums We&#

R/WW takes a look at Compete’s attempt to track the engagement level of web sites by looking at more than just visitors and page views.
With increasing use of Flash and Ajax, using page views as a measure of a site’s popularity becomes more redundant (since only one page actually loads). To help marketers better research the popularity of web sites, they’ve introduced two new metrics: Attention: The total time spent on a s

While the average spent on online advertising in the U.S. hovers around 5% of total ad budgets, the U.K. is blazing a trail with 11.4%.
Online advertising grew by more than 41% in 2006, overtaking national newspaper ads (10.7% share) and about half the amount spent on TV ads (which actually dropped 4.7%).
It’s good news for online marketers…
“The internet is a hugely popular mass medium now, and advertisers are continuing to swi

If you’re doing email marketing, you really need to get it right. You need to start off on the right foot: around 80% of recipients will mark an email as spam based on subject line and sender alone, according to a survey conducted by the Email Sender and Provider Coalition. Trevor Hughes, executive director of the Email Sender and Provider Coalition, told ClickZ: We found that four out of five folks are deleting or reporting messages as

It’s no secret that every ratings service has different numbers for search engine market shares, site visits, and just about any other metric out there. What to do?
We ask Danny Sullivan. (I mean, DUH. Who else would you ask?) Danny has a set of graphs showing the trends over the last year from comScore, Hitwise, Nielsen and Compete. So what are the conclusions? While there’s a relatively huge spread on the percentage, the over

Although still highly “niche,” the popularity of podcasting has grown by 18% over year according to Edison Media Research (via Podcasting News). In their survey in 2007, 13% had listened to a podcast, up from 11% in 2006. (The 18% is lift: (13-11)/11=0.181818.) Awareness of podcasts has grown even more, from 22% having heard of the medium in 2006 to 37% in 2007. (68% lift.) Video casting has grown from 10 to 11%, which is 10% li

As part of our ongoing efforts to support the open source and academic communities, Google provides funding to researchers investigating open source software development. Over the last 3.5 years, Martin Michlmayr, a former leader of the Debian project, has investigated aspects of release management in volunteer open source projects. Martin is studying for a PhD degree and his work is in part supported by Google. His particular interest is in q

Engagement is getting to be quite the buzz word lately. While it’s certainly important to any site, engagement is the lifeblood of community websites. If you’re thinking about building an online community, a new study by online community developer Communispace can help.
Time for data. (Oh, numbers, how I love thee!) (And some words. Whatever.) From MediaPost: 86% of the people who log on to private, facilitated communities wit

Apparently it goes both ways with online searches and offline activity. MediaPost’s Center for Media Research reports that offline advertising often prompts online searches. In fact, of any action taken, the study performed by BIGresearch and teh Retail Advertising and Marketing Association finds that an online search is the most popular consumer response to an engaging advertisement.
Just under half of the consumers surveyed said they

Robert Scoble used to work at MSFT, but he was never really one to show a strong bias to the company. So, when the world’s most discussed tech blogger makes the claim that Microsoft is better at research than Google, you tend to take note.
Backing up his claim is a video tour of Microsoft’s research department. Better than Google? Anyone care to argue? One thing worth noting, Google has millions of researchers in its department - ye

I noticed a change to the Alexa traffic reports late Friday, and have now found the official announcement from Alexa. They’ve added new data points including:

Geographic location of visitors.
Your site’s traffic rank in different countries.
Audience reach percentages.
Changing terminology to reflect latest data is from “yesterday” and not “today”.

Pilgrim Partners: Best of the Web Blog Directory - Find out what the best bloggers are talking about now. Submit your blog today!

TRUSTe has issued its first Trusted Download whitelist. The criteria to gain “Trusted Download” status included that the software is required:

to clearly communicate key functionalities, to obtain informed consumer consent prior to download, and provide an easy uninstall with clear instructions, among other requirements.

The Trusted Download program has already developed a receptive marketing plan

It’s true: newspapers are outperforming TV in video ads. In 2006, newspapers’ websites sold $81 million in local online streaming video advertisements. Local TV broadcasters’ websites sold only $32 million. Even taken with the other $48 million spent on online video advertising, it’s not much compared to the advertising industry total of $280 billion

In honor of Valentine’s day: e-mail marketing is part of a love triangle. Perhaps that might more accurately be described as a love-hate triangle.
Marketers remain hopelessly devoted to the medium. E-mail marketing was chosen as the #1 most important advertising media in 2007 according to an informal survey of 1500 marketing professionals conducted by Datran Media

A recent UK survey of mobile phone users suggests that there may be no where near the amount of people using their cell phones for search, as believed.
Just 20% of UK subscribers actually search for content on the mobile internet, despite an industry perception that 89% do, according to research released today, from the Mobile Entertainment Forum and Ovum

What’s more, they’re not searching for restaurants, or directions

Esnips’ Eran Arkin has compiled a nice list of the “movers and shakers” of social media - aka Web 2.0 sites.
It’s based on Alexa data, so not necessarily the most accurate gauge of what’s popular, but if nothing else, it’s a great way to view all of your favorite social networks.
What is interesting? Marketing Pilgrim has more traffic than Odeo, Oodle, Pageflakes, Zoho and Feedster - yep, as I was saying, you have to trust the Alexa data

eMarketer Daily looked into its crystal ball once again Monday to produce another collection of contradictory studies and quotations. This time, we get to debate whether eCommerce will plateau soon or continue to grow the way it has (article free & live for a limited time).
The problem with exponential or even linear growth is that as you get bigger and bigger, it becomes more and more difficult to sustain the same rate of growth—but not necessarily the same amount of growth

Allurent, Inc. has released its “Holiday Shopping: Online Customer Experience Survey.” Their main finding is:

The survey revealed that a growing number of consumers (41% in 2006 compared to 28% in 2005) said a frustrating online experience would make them less likely to shop at that retailer’s physical store

Advertising.com has released a study that indicates that 66% of Internet users age 18 and up surveyed viewed online video content at least once a week. Advertising.com divided their results into two age demographics: 18 to 34 and 35 and up.
Key findings for each demographic included:

18 to 34

44% of online video viewers fell into this age group

Outsell, Inc. has released a report that seems to indicate that we are reaching the end of an era: they project broadcast and print ad spending will decrease in 2007. Key findings of their survey of 1010 advertising professionals include:

Online spending growing the fastest: companies plan to increase online spending by 18% this year as online advertising’s market share increases to 20% of advertising spend.
Advertisers perceive online advertising as “very effective” for branding, a reversal of their “conventional wisdom.”
Search marketing is the fastest growing online medium: advertisers plan to increase search engine advertising spend by 39% (though Outsell didn’t indicate whether this was SEO, PPC or both in its press release).
PPC ads’ market share will actually decrease 1% this year; other online media will grow (CPA ads: 8%; “online sponsorships” 12%).
Why is PPC falling? Ten guesses

I love to collect free PDF white papers, but I hardly ever read them. I made an exception for the recent release of “Keyword Research and Selection: The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Sorting and Organizing Your Keywords into a High-Performance SEO Campaign” by Stoney G. deGeyter (and Jason Green) of E-Marketing Performance and Pole Position Marketing

A new poll conducted by insurance company AXA, reveals retirees in the UK spend an average of 6 hours a week online. The new addiction comes at the expense of more traditional pastimes…
Forty-one percent listed surfing the Internet among their favorite pastimes, slightly ahead of the second choices, gardening and home improvements (both 39 percent), and travel and walking (28 percent)…Their top Internet activity was e-mailing (84 percent) and looking for information (83 percent).

Booking vacations, online banking and reading news were also popular activities online.

Back in December, I caused a little bit of a ruckus when I posted information from Google that suggested click fraud rates were a fraction of a percent. The majority of readers and linkers suggested that the rate was far too low and that you couldn’t trust data supplied by the search engine.
Fast forward six weeks and we find ourselves confronted with new data from Click Forensics that suggests industry click-fraud rates have increased to 14.2 in Q4, versus 13.8% in Q3

Presidential hopefuls for 2008 have already started campaigning online. With websites, blogs, vlogs from everyone from John Edwards to Sen. John McCain, the Internet is beginning to be inundated with ’08’s hopefuls—except in one area: pay-per-click.
Daily Kos reports Sunday on the pay-per-click race so far:
Republicans seem to be first out of the starting gate in the paid search arena.
[Mitt] Romney is clearly the most aggressive advertiser with his name displaying on searches for himself and five other candidates

Online branding magazine Brandchannel.com asked 3,625 branding professionals and students to vote on “Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?”.
Here are the top 5 global brands, based purely on impact of the brand:

Google
Apple
YouTube
Wikipedia
Starbucks

The list order changes a little, when you look just at North America:

Apple
YouTube
Google
Starbucks
Wikipedia

Curious about Europe?

Ikea
Skype
Nokia
Zara
Adidas

How comfortable do you feel, sending confidential information via email? I know that I try only to ever send my bank account details and SSN to the very highest of Nigerian princes, just in case the email goes astray.
Well, according to a small survey of attendees of the ISPA’s annual Parliamentary Advisory Forum, they share your fears in sending sensitive emails.
Fear of high-profile security scares (27 per cent), a lack of adequate security offerings from ISPs (24 per cent) and the inability to guarantee sender/recipient ID (33 per cent) were cited as today’s top three obstacles to mass user adoption of email for confidential communications.

However, hope is on the horizon, with many believing email will become more secure in the future.
…47 per cent of industry representatives in attendance expected email to surpass traditional forms of confidential communications (recorded mail, courier etc) by 2009

comScore Networks report on European spending during the 2006 holiday season, starting October 30. They found that

Germany spent 5.4 billion euros online
the UK spent 4.0 billion euros online
France spent 1.9 billion euros online.

This compares with the US’s online holiday spending of $24.6 billion, or 18.8 billion euros.
Okay, okay, I know you can do the math, and the US has 18.8 billion and the three European countries only have 11.3 billion euros—obviously the US is still ahead

According to new comScore data, both Google and Yahoo have something to celebrate today, they each gained search engine market share - Google up 0.4% to 47.4%; Yahoo up 0.3% to 28.5%.
Bad news for Microsoft and Ask, they both slid this time around. It was only yesterday that we reported on MSFT’s search engine woes, now they’ve dropped half a point to 10.5%

There’s a new found reason why companies make the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies - they’re embracing social media.
Eric Mattson and Nora Ganim Barnes have put together a study on social media adoption among 121 members of the Inc. 500 and discovered some pretty interesting stats.
How familiar are the Inc

I’ve noticed that I’m visiting Search Engine Watch less and less these days. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re doing an admirable job in keeping it active, but since the departure of Danny, Chris and Barry, it’s just not been the same.
Without the industry contacts and scoops that Danny Sullivan brings, it looks like traffic levels have dropped off significantly

This is another post in the “IE 7 Sucks” series. This time, I’ve been poking around at data that suggests IE 7 really is crap, and it’s not just readers of Marketing Pilgrim, that think so.
Taking a look at Opinmind, we learn that only 24% of bloggers have a positive sentiment towards Internet Explorer, compared to 69% positive with Firefox.
Switching to Technorati, we discover 632 bloggers have stated “internet explorer sucks“, compared to 274 who think the same of Firefox.
Using Google Trends, it’s clear that more people are looking to download Firefox, compared to IE

A new Pew Internet & American Life Project survey of U.S. teens aged 12 to 17, reveals 55% of those with internet access visit social networking sites and of those 85% prefer MySpace.
Hidden in the data is a clue of how these teens will help ensure social networks become key to marketers in the future

Google’s added a nifty little tool to Google Reader that allows you to view stats on your RSS reading trends. I’m not quite sure how this information is going to help me - other than prove I am addicted to blog reading - but it’s somewhat fun to examine.
What would be cool is to see this data across the entire Google Reader user base (anonymous of course)

Reuters has details of a new report from Deloitte that looks at media trends for 2007. Part of the report focuses on how successful mainstream media will be at integrating user-generated content. The biggest problem appears to be how they’ll make money from user  content.
Howard Davies, a director of media strategy at Deloitte explains why it’s tough to make money from social media.
“There’s something about the social user … community that is absolutely not professional and so the community doesn’t want it to be commercialised,” he said about advertising around Web sites dedicated to the content.

That certainly seems to be the case with many popular social media destinations

TechCrunch’s infamous Michael Arrington has listed the “Web 2.0″ companies he couldn’t live without in 2007, but we may as well call it “the top tech companies to watch in 2007″.
It’s a list most marketers should consider reviewing. While it has some tech companies that don’t quite cross into marketing, Arrington’s list is full of social media and search companies, including Ask City, BlueDot, Digg, Flickr, YouTube and more.

comScore Networks reports that online retail spending reached $100 billion for the year as of Saturday, December 23. It looks like procrastinators placed their faith in expedited shipping, as the last business week before Christmas saw $2.25 billion in eCommerce.
2006 year-to-date spending was up by 26% over 2005, but the last week before Christmas increased 38% over the same period in 2005

Want to know the best way to push any website to the #1 popularity spot for its industry? It’s quite simple, you leverage the traffic from one of Google’s existing properties.
Need proof?
Google’s Blog Search has taken over the #1 spot from Technorati, thanks to a link placed on the homepage of Google News

Today eMarketer Daily compiled conflicting reports on the future of mobile marketing. According to “Mobile Entertainment’s Potential Sharply Debated” by John du Pre Gauntt (free & live on a limited basis), the predictions for mobile revenues vary wildly:
In November 2006, Juniper Research forecast that total revenues for wireless providers from mobile entertainment in the mobile music, video, TV, gambling, gaming and adult categories would exceed $77 billion by 2011.

One month later, Informa Telecoms & Media followed with a mobile entertainment forecast that stated the total market in 2011 would be $38.1 billion

Following up on their May study, McAfee reports that search results have become safer on Google, Ask and AOL. Yahoo and MSN now return riskier results than they did in May.
How does McAfee define “risk”? They have three levels:
Red ratings are given to risky sites that fail one or more of McAfee’s tests for adware, spyware, viruses, exploits, spammy e- mail, excessive pop-ups or strong affiliations with other red rated sites

Last week, Vertis Communications released their Consumer Focus® Tech Savvy study. The headline they ran with was “Future Plans Reveal Women to be More Tech Savvy.” That conclusion was based on their finding that 74% of Generation Y women (born 1977-1994) are planning on buying at least one electronic device in the next year, versus 58% of all 3000 adults surveyed

Last year when reports about Cyber Monday came out, I was skeptical. However, it looks as though Cyber Monday is a real phenomenon—but not exactly as Shop.org claimed when they fabricated the term last year.
comScore reports that the best single day for online commerce this year was indeed a Monday—Monday, December 11

So, Red Herring tells us that a new comScore report will show that MySpace had more page views in November than Yahoo.
What I would like to know is what was the average length of visit for those page views. It’s one thing to throw a lot of crap against a wall, but how much of it is stick