SiteLab Blog

Dana Todd, Chairperson of the Board of Directors for The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization and Chief Marketing Officer of Newsforce, Inc., presides over the Opening Bell. Congratulations Dana!

The Economist is reporting that “Internet advertising will be relatively unscathed in the downturn.” While this sounds like great news to us, considering we’re in the business of helping our clients succeed online, much of the online advertising growth is coming at the expense of traditional media venues.  As online advertising technology continues to improve tracking and reporting, advertisers are starting to view these costs more as cost of sales and move more of their ad spend towards these online venues.

The primary destination for ad dollars spent online continues to be search engines offering paid search placement, with Google drawing in the bulk of this spend.  In fact more than half of all ad spend is going to paid search venues.  eMarketer is projecting that online ad spending will continue to grow by 8.9% in the US, which is good but slower than the 14.5% previously forecasted.

Ok, so you have all been on Facebook and have been asked to be a ninja, a zombie, have had a mojito passed to you, have been stalked and have gawked at many of your ‘”friends” status updates.  Those same people have also been on Myspace and have been asked “Why am I not in your Top 8?”

Buying ads on these two social sites seemed to be the end all in reaching coveted demographics, (see 18-30) but, advertisers are realizing that the ROI is just not worth the investment.  To put it more bluntly, “Marketers don’t care about teenagers sharing photographs with one another,” Cone tells Marketing Daily. And while companies can post their own products or marketing-oriented profiles on these sites, site users “are likely to turn off” if they see too much marketing on these kinds of channels, which they consider vehicles for personal communications, he adds.

“The same applies to text messaging,” Cone notes. “The channel can be used for marketing, but it’s not advisable.”

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Here is a quick heads-up for anyone looking to refresh their SEO skills.  Point your browser to Google’s Webmaster Central blog and download their SEO starter guide.  In traditional Google style, the guide is writen in a very straight forward and easy to read way.  There are a few great tips in there so it’s worth devoting a few minutes to.

You may not have noticed it but your spam filter has had a lot less work to do in the last couple days.  McColo Corp, an internet service provider located in northern California, has been identified as one of the largest senders of spam worldwide.  Starting last Tuesday many internet providers have started unplugging McColo, resulting in an overall drop in spam by roughly 75%!  Spamcop.net reports they are seeing a drop in spam from 40 emails per second to 10.