Archive for the ‘General SEM’ Category

The worldwide internet advertising sector will see sustained growth this year, a new forecast has claimed.

Spending on the medium will rise by 23 per cent by the end of 2008, meaning that €31.7 billion (£25.4 billion) will be spent on online advertising in total, the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) said.

In Europe, spending will rise by 31 per cent to reach €9.1 billion, with US expenditure predicted to grow 13 per cent to €13.6 billion, despite being the nation that has been most affected by the global financial crisis, the report showed.

Recent reports from the Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK and the Interactive Advertising Bureau in the US have also confirmed double-digit spending rises in both regions for the first half of this year.

"The internet economy in Europe is developing very dynamically and making great strides towards catching the leader, the USA," remarked Bruno Lamborghini, chairman of EITO.

The online advertising sector needs to take a more measured approach to the issue of behaviourally targeted advertising, it has been claimed.

Speaking at the Westminster eForum on online advertising, Simon Waldman of the Guardian Media Group (GMG) called for regulators and publishers to refrain from overreacting to the privacy issues linked to the format, Journalism.co.uk reports.

Targeted ad firm Phorm is currently trialling its technology with BT broadband customers, with the system tracking users’ web browsing habits to serve ads based on this data.

Mr Waldman said that regulation of this medium will become one of the most important issues for the overall ad market in the near future.

"The issue of privacy is going to rear its head and I hope there’s an intelligent approach to it and not scaremongering," he commented.

GMG pulled out of talks to sign up to Phorm’s ad network earlier this year as a result of a mismatch of values, it said.

Yahoo! has unveiled a new beta version of its web analytics application.

Based on a product offered by recent acquisition IndexTools, Yahoo! Web Analytics provides webmasters and online marketers with a range of figures and reports that show how well their sites and campaigns are performing.

Users can access metrics like sources of traffic, pages views and sales, as well as generate customised graphics and reports in real-time.

The tool will be released in phases during the rest of this year and next, Yahoo! said on the Yodel Anecdotal blog, although Yahoo! Small Business customers can already use the application.

"We have already started to roll Yahoo! Web Analytics out to advertisers who seek Yahoo!’s help to build custom microsites, as well as to third-party application developers who build widgets and other mini-apps for Yahoo! users via our developer network or our new Yahoo! Open Strategy tools," explained vice-president of Yahoo! Web Analytics Jitendra Kavathekar.

According to CNET News.com, one of the main advantages of using Yahoo! Web Analytics over Google Analytics is that data tends to be updated within minutes of an instance of user activity, whereas Google takes about 24 hours to do so.

Search giant Google has unveiled the beta version of a new AdSense product designed specifically for online games.

Those developing or publishing web-based games can now place video, text and image ads in their creations through AdSense for Games.

Video ads are placed wherever desired, while image and text ads will see their placement determined contextually depending on the tags and keywords provided by developers and publishers.

"You’ll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over," commented Ryan Hayward of Google on the Inside AdSense blog.

The product is at present only available in the US to selected organisations. Partner companies for the service include Konami, Playfish, Zynga and Demand Media, among others.

Google said it is launching AdSense for Games to take advantage of the growing proportion of the internet population that now plays games on the web.

Revenues from search engine marketing in the US soared by 44 per cent to more than $5 billion (£2.8 billion) in the first two quarters of 2008.

This is according to new figures released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in their latest report, which also indicated growth of 15.2 per cent for overall online advertising revenues.

Total internet ad revenues equalled $11.5 billion, while income from the display ad sector rose by 33 per cent to a figure of $3.8 billion, which included video, banner, sponsorship and rich media ads.

Meanwhile, revenue from referrals and lead generation totalled $806 million and classifieds income equated to $1.6 billion, the IAB said.

"Due to the unique efficiency and effectiveness of targeted and measurable campaigns, internet advertising has shown strong growth in the first six months of 2008, compared to the same time period last year," David Silverman of PwC said.

He noted that this growth came in spite of an increasingly pressurised environment for the overall ad sector.

The UK Internet Advertising Bureau recently revealed similar positive growth for the British online ad industry, with spending on the medium reaching almost £1.7 billion in the first half of the year in the UK.

Total spending on internet advertising saw a 21 per cent rise in the first half of 2008, a new report has revealed.

Spending on the medium reached £1.68 billion during the period, helping it to account for 18.7 per cent of all ad expenditure, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers said in their assessment of the sector.

According to comments made by IAB chief executive Guy Phillipson to Reuters, this could reach £3.2 billion by the end of the year.

The report also showed that paid search expenditure soared by 28 per cent in the first six months of 2008 to reach £981 million, while display advertising posted a 16.3 per cent rise to £333.8 million.

Mr Phillipson said: "Online is not immune from the economic downturn, but while other sectors see falls in expenditure the internet is still experiencing an incredible increase and is propping up the entire advertising market."

According to figures released by IDC earlier this year, global spending on online advertising will reach $65.2 billion (£37.2 billion) this year.

The internet advertising industry will continue its strong growth in spite of the effects of the credit crunch, according to experts.

Emma Jenkins, head of interactive marketing at Procter & Gamble, told the Independent that it is important to note the growing number of marketers shifting their ad investments online as the economy continues to slow.

"It’s important to remember that the digital industry remains buoyant, at least for now," she remarked.

Meanwhile, the newspaper said that the Internet Advertising Bureau is set to release new research later this week indicating that online spending remains above expectations.

However, Google UK director Matt Brittin highlighted the importance of innovation in growing operations on the online medium, indicating that organisations more used to traditional media channels may suffer as a result.

Research firm eMarketer recently released figures showing that £3.3 billion will be spent on online advertising in the UK this year.

Ask.com is set to launch a new look and faster, more relevant search results this month.

The search service has bigger competitors such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft in its sights as it seeks to take advantage of distractions for these companies in the form of search deals and potential mergers, Reuters reports.

Jim Safka, chief executive of Ask.com, told the news provider that the company is hoping to increase its search advertising revenue while providing users with an improved experience.

This will include offering more "serendipitous results", as well as helping users to get to their desired website in one click rather than three, he explained.

"It’s all about growth - this category is growing no matter what the economy is doing," Mr Safka said of the search industry.

Ask.com acquired Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com by purchasing their owner, Lexico Publishing Group, in May this year.

The acquisition helped to increase the Ask network’s base of unique users to over 145 million.

A new study has revealed that 61 per cent of UK chief marketing officers (CMOs) expect to allocate more than half of their budgets to online marketing in the coming year.

Carried out by Rackspace, the poll also showed that this will lead to lower investment in traditional marketing channels, New Media Age reports.

About 92 per cent of CMOs said they thought social networking was the least effective online marketing medium, however.

And two-fifths of respondents admitted to experiencing technology-related problems when implementing their online strategies, while only 48 per cent said they were in the habit of ensuring their websites could cope with extra traffic before beginning a new campaign.

Earlier this year, E-consultancy released a report indicating that nine per cent of UK organisations spend more than £1 million on an annual basis on search engine marketing campaigns.

One in six firms spend a minimum of £50,000 on organic optimisation every year, the research also found.

Website search analytics can help businesses to find out exactly what potential customers want from them, an expert has said.

Speaking in an interview with E-consultancy, Lou Rosenfeld of publishing company Rosenfeld Media said that analytics can identify key search trends and provide organisations with the data they need to improve their websites.

This information can be used in a number of different ways - Mr Rosenfeld cited the Financial Times as an example, which keeps an eye on spikes in queries for specific company and person names.

"They check to see if these suddenly popular queries correlate with their recent editorial coverage; if not, a spike might indicate a breaking story and the paper’s editors are informed," he explained.

A number of search engines offer website search services that can be tailored to individual sites and blogs, such as Google’s Custom Search Engine.