Image from here: The Death of Print « Damn Pesky Indie Kid

I have always had this theory that “March Madness” is something that is also experienced in the business world. It seems like March is a month where people really get stuff done.

All the really cool headlines I found this week seem to support that belief. There is just a ton of interesting, industry-evolving news I came across.

If I had to pick just one headline that had a major impact on me, it would be “Outsell forecasts that online spending will overtake print in 2010.”

I’ve always felt like my industry is the tail of the dog. Web marketing has always been the marketing that was thrown leftover scraps of the real marketing budget. Print and TV always got a fire hydrant blast of money and Web got the equivalent to the little hose that was plugged into the ice maker in my refrigerator.

That just doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

Since the beginning of my career in Web marketing back in 1999, I knew this day would come. I also believe that this is still only the beginning.

In the future, TV and print will just be a support mechanism to the “real” marketing that happens online.

The reason I know this will happen is because of one simple reason: Online marketing can be tracked. Offline marketing will never be able to fully track the way we can track online. And that’s how us online people will win the war.

The big hurdle, however, is the status quo. People don’t like to change. Recessions, however, do a great job of getting people to move in new directions. This recession will ultimately be a major push for this new change of the guard.

But that’s just one of the many great headlines from the past week. Check out the rest of ‘em here:

Companies Spend More on Email Than PPC; 39% Have No Clue of ROI

Well, according to the data discovered in Econsultancy’s 2010 Email Marketing Census, companies are spending more on email marketing (17% of online budgets) than PPC (16%) despite not fully understanding the return on investment (ROI) achieved or taking advantage of one of the most important benefits of email marketing: segmentation.

Almost forty per cent of those that are spending more on email marketing than search, have no idea why they do so!

Eye-tracking Proves Real-Time Search Not Useful

It took consumers 7.09 seconds to look at the real-time results, even though they’re listed just below the news results and before the organic results. In fact, they scrolled below the fold to view the image results before they fixated on the real-time area, the eleventh area they focused on.

Bing Takes Baby Steps Towards Catching Google

According to comScore’s data, Bing climbed from 11.3% to 11.5%, likely stealing that share from the “we’ve given up on search” Yahoo, which dropped from 17% to 16.8%.

Study: 79% of Twitter Accounts Are Not Actively Used

Lastly, who tweets the most? Those with around 1,000 followers do:

How Important is Google PageRank in 2010?

Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig: “Yes, that computation is important but it’s just one of many things.”

Outsell forecasts that online spending will overtake print in 2010 – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

According to Outsell, spending on online advertising and marketing will overtake print in 2010 for the first time. The research and advisory firm’s annual forecast predicts companies will spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies, from search engine keywords to webinars, while committing $111.5 billion to print media such as newspaper and magazine ads this year.

Razorfish Improves Efficiencies by 50% with Marin Search Marketer – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Razorfish turned to Marin Software to streamline paid search efforts for their clients. As a result, they’ve reduced time spent on daily bidding, reporting, and campaign management by up to 50%.

Roundup: Social Media Monitoring Tools – WebWorkerDaily

So here’s a roundup of some of the more popular tracking tools.

Best Keyword Ranking Tools for SEO | WordStream

Now, there are a lot of a lot of paid and free tools out there that help SEOs track keyword rankings. Some are paid and some are free. In writing this post, I did a lot of research to bring you the best keyword ranking tools for SEO.

How to Create a Text Marketing Campaign : Marketing :: American Express OPEN Forum

More sophisticated SMS marketing services offer campaign software, a dashboard, reports, customer databases and more. An all-in-one service like MobileCommons allows you to create a list, start a campaign, track it, and refine it as necessary – just as you would with any ad campaign.

You can use a service like MobiQpons which allows people in your area to sign up and receive coupons for discounts. Only people within 10 miles of your business will receive your coupon.

Foursquare Courts Business Users with Checkin Analysis Features

Data includes total checkins, unique visitors, male-to-female ratio, social media-sharing (i.e. showing how many users are sending their checkins to Twitter (Twitter)), top visitors and checkin time breakdown. Users can opt-out of sharing their checkin data via settings section of the website.

I was out of town most of last week. So you didn’t get any news overview from me then. But I’m making up for it this week with both this week and last weeks’ news.

Two stories, in particular, have interesting implications from my point of view.

First, Matt Cutts’ blog post “Calling for link spam reports” is a real forward call on Google’s behalf to root out link spam. Google wants you to turn in anyone you think may be engaged in link spam. Maybe it’s just because I was watching MSNBC’s “Lockup” last night, where the prisoner code is to never snitch, but I am initially turned off by the whole snitching mentality. While I think that a show like “America’s Most Wanted” is probably a net positive for our country, I just have a hard time thinking that everybody is out there waiting to turn in anybody. I have a little resentment every time I think of the Unibomber’s brother turning him in.

But that’s just me. Apparently I’m way in the minority here. And honestly, I’m sure reporting link spam will make things better. So, go forth and report link spam.

The other report that struck me as particularly interesting is “B2B Marketers: 490% Increase in Social Media Spend by 2014?“. Actually, that headline isn’t the most interesting part of the report. The vast majority of money spent by b2b marketers online is in paid search. That intrigues me. It’s not display, email or SEO. They are buying pay-per-click ads in droves. That is interesting if you are a b2b marketer so you can see how you line up to your peers. And it’s interesting if you are an agency that caters to b2b companies. You probably should be pushing ppc ads real heavy.

So, those are the thoughts that jumped out at me. Here’s the rest of the headlines:

Calling for link spam reports

Google has been working on some new algorithms and tools to tackle linkspam and we’d like to ask for linkspam reports from you. If you’d like to tell us about web sites that appear to be using spammy links (e.g. paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers, etc.), here’s how to send us more info.

126 Million Blogs on the Internet – Search Engine Guide Blog

• 1.73 Billion Internet users worldwide
• 90 Trillion Emails Sent in 2009
• 81% of Emails were Spam
• 126 Million Blogs on the Internet
• 27.3 Million Tweets Per Day
• Faceboook serves 6 million pages per minute
• 4 Billion photos hosted by Flickr
• 182 Videos watched on average per month (per user)

Study: 43% of Email Marketers Want a Slice of the Social Media Pie

43% of email marketing firms are already offering social media marketing as part of their service line-up:

Facebook Increases Local Ad Targeting Capabilities and SMB’s Rejoice

In its latest move to expand its performance advertising program, Facebook is offering what it tells us is “thousands” of new cities in its self-serve advertising tool, meaning advertisers can more narrowly target users across the United States and around the world.

B2B Marketers: 490% Increase in Social Media Spend by 2014?

Forrester is predicting a significant uptick in internet marketing by those in the B2B space. In fact, it’s predicting spend will almost double over the next five years–going from $2.3 billion in 2009 to $4.8 billion in 2014!

Trackur Shakes Up the Social Media Monitoring Space with a Free Plan

Trackur Free comes with all of the great functionality we offer in our Personal and Corporate plans, but without the price tag! You get unlimited search results, anyone can share your login, you get reports, CSV export, RSS and email alerts. Just about everything we offer. The only restriction is that you can only save one search on Trackur Free. For individuals or small businesses, that may be all you ever need!

Display Makes Searchers Buy Faster

They found that early one in five people who convert after using search had seen at least one display ad before searching. Eyeblaster concluded that display advertising increases the reach of campaigns, pushing more consumers to search. Those consumers then move through the purchasing funnel faster.

Local Advertising to Make Gradual Comeback With Digital Leading the Way

BIA/Kelsey said there was a slowdown in the growth rate for digital, including search, display and classifieds, but it predicted that digital – now about 14 percent of total local ad spend – will encompass 25 percent by 2014.

Yahoo! Launches Paid Search Desktop Tool – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

New tool allows you to manage multiple search marketing campaigns offline.

AdWords Extends Mobile Click-to-Call to National Advertisers – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

For example, let’s say you’re searching for a car rental and an ad from a national chain pops up in your mobile search. Perhaps they want to funnel all calls through a single number. Now, they can do so with Click-to-Call mobile ads in AdWords.

DiggAds Off to a Good Start – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Buch said that revenues are great and that advertisers are pleased with the results. For example, Paramount saw great results promoting the low-budget scare flick Paranormal Activity using DiggAds.

Digg users for the most part seemed pleased. They’ve requested the ability to comment on ads and Digg has listened – that feature is in the works.

Google Adds Sidewiki Control to Google Webmaster Tools

The feature basically let’s you control the message you show to users who use that Google Sidewiki within the Google Toolbar. In the past, webmasters had to use the Google Toolbar to add a site owner message.

Photo from: Facebook – Blogrunner

Facebook continues to push their aggressive, innovative lead.

I’ve referenced what turned out to be 3 different stories that directly relate to Facebook. The one I want you to pay particular attention to is “Facebook Fan Pages May Actually Be Effective Marketing“.

This references a study done by one retailer that tracks the influence Facebook has had on their business. It’s an impressive account of their success.

I do a lot of social media training these days. One of the top questions people always ask is, “How is all this going to make me money?”

This study starts to answer that kind of question head-on.

I predict Facebook will continue to push hard in the statistical analysis aspect of their business. The more they can prove the case that “Facebook makes you money,” the quicker they will get more advertisers.

Keep a close eye on Facebook for your business. I predict this will very likely become the second most important place to promote your business (after Google).

And here’s the rest of the news…

Microsoft Yahoo Search Deal Passes Regulatory Hurdle

The integration of the two engines will be started immediately and it will take until 2011 before the advertising part of the deal is integrated.

Facebook Fan Pages May Actually Be Effective Marketing (For Facebook Users)

FB fans:

* Made 36 percent more visits to DG’s stores each month.
* Spent 45 percent more of their eating-out dollars at DG.
* Spent 33 percent more at DG’s stores.
* Had 14 percent higher emotional attachment to the DG brand.
* Had 41 percent greater psychological loyalty toward DG.

Facebook Offers More Control Over Information Shared Through Apps

There are now granular privacy options that enable you to personalize the audience for each piece of content you share through applications. Simply select the group of people you want to share with from the drop-down menu near the lock icon on the Publisher on your home page or profile, or the prompts that appear when you share from applications or Facebook Connect websites.

Facebook Corners 44% of Social Sharing

Twitter had 29%, Yahoo 18% and MySpace 9%.

Fortune 500 Spending $1.2 Billion on Paid Search, Because They Can’t Rank Naturally!

According to a new study from Conductor, only 25% of the Fortune 500’s combined targeted paid keywords–97,555 keywords, totaling a daily spend of $3.4M–ranked in the top 50 natural search results.

only 2% of Fortune 500 domains analyzed had any significant number of search terms in the top results

Google Gives SMB Market Something to Look Forward To

Now Mr. Cowie is trying something new: for a flat fee of $25 a month, he is making his listings on Google stand out. Whenever his shop comes up in a search page or on a Google map, it is adorned with a bright yellow tag. The tag links to the Kingpinz Web site, but these enhanced listings, as the ads are called, can also link to a coupon, store directions, a photograph or a video of a business, or, in the case of a restaurant, a menu or reservations page.

Study Reveals Google, Yahoo & Bing Users Perceive Your Brand Differently

Bing users, for example, tend to be mostly from the tip of the adoption curve (innovators and early adopters) where Yahoo! and Google’s passengers tend to be middle majority [and] each search engine demonstrated different degrees of consumer engagement ranging from visiting to finally purchasing.

How to Make Money on Foursquare

This new social broadcast application can help your business promote deals, get the attention of savvy early adopters of technology, or simply to increase foot traffic.

Photo from: Unintended Contextual Advertising? on Flickr

As I look over the news this week, I see a trend discussing a resurgence in display advertisement. Google is looking to make more money and shiny, moving picture ads is probably the way to go.

The difference this time around will hopefully be metrics. If display media has a chance of truly succeeding, metrics will be the determining factor. And if anyone is up for making those metrics possible, it’s Google.

So, if 2010 is the year you dabble in a little display media just be sure to ask yourself: “What is the goal of this whole thing?”

Here’s the rest of the news:

Google Pays $50M for an Anteater

Aardvark was just acquired by Google for a cool $50 million.

People Don’t Trust People Like You Anymore

The executive summary shows traditional media trust is diving, with TV news down 20%, radio news down 17% and print news down 12%.

Google Display Ad Business Poised for $1 B in 2010

About $700 million of that number should come from YouTube while the remaining will come out of the DoubleClick operations that are gaining momentum.

Bing – Webmaster Center FAQ updated – Webmaster Center Blog – Bing Community

The Webmaster Center FAQ document now contains 82 detailed questions and answers, organized into 12 categories, all navigable through a linked table of contents.

The Rise of Universal Paid Search – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Google is putting a big emphasis on display in 2010:

“Our display business will give advertisers the opportunity to reach people with visual stories and narratives that they couldn’t with search-ad text,” Mr. Schmidt said on a call with analysts.

“We’ve been saying for a while that display is a big opportunity. One story you haven’t seen so far is how successful we’ve been in display, but that will come out in 2010.” (AllThingsD)

Americans conducted 15.2 core searches in January 2010 – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

In January 2010, Americans conducted 15.2 billion core searches.

First, I want you to take a look at “How did you do on the Webmaster Quiz?” This is a quiz that Google offered to people regarding SEO. The answers, found on that link, give you a really nice comprehensive overview of Google approved SEO behaviors. You most certainly will learn a lot from that.

Then I want you to look at 2 stories together. “70% of Companies Plan to Spend More” and “Social Media Case Study: Piper Aircraft.”

The first article goes on to say, “They want to do it, but 40% of those surveyed simply don’t have the budget to spend more on marketing this year.”

So, cash is still really tight for marketing. But the Piper Aircraft story says that they did the entire campaign on $40,000. That’s not too shabby considering they say they sold at least one airplane for $140,000 using this social media campaign.

Back at the first story, the survey asked: “What is preventing your company from investing more money in digital marketing?”
Money is the first answer.
But the #2 answer is: “Lack of staff to make most of any digital investment.”

This answer is a huge opportunity for everyone. If you are a Web marketer I would highly suggest you start promoting social media education and training. If you are a company that doesn’t have the people to get this done, I would highly recommend you start getting education and training.

Here’s the rest of the news. Enjoy!

Facebook Sends More News Traffic than Google News

After Google (17.32%), Yahoo (7.89%) and msn (4.43%), Facebook was the fourth most popular referrer for news websites.

29% of Companies Have a Social Media Policy

Manpower shows that only 29% of companies have a formal social media policy in place.

70% of Companies Plan to Spend More on Twitter & Facebook Marketing

They want to do it, but 40% of those surveyed simply don’t have the budget to spend more on marketing this year.

Tripping Link Filters | Link Spiel

Hoards of people don’t just give away links to a single site/page unless they’ve been asked/paid to do so, so the engine assumes the links haven’t been acquired editorially and either ignore them or slaps you down.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: How did you do on the Webmaster Quiz?

we’re pleased to present the Webmaster Quiz answers!

178 million Americans watched 33 billion videos in December – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

This means Americans watched an average of 187 videos per viewer during the month.

Social Media Case Study: Piper Aircraft Launches PiperSport Light Sport Aircraft on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

• Videos about the PiperSport, posted on the PiperSport YouTube channel, have been viewed 22,808 times.
• PiperSport has 4,886 fans on Facebook, a large percentage of whom are active, engaged, and contributing to the community with photos, news, insight, reviews, and enthusiasm.
• Major aviation journalists and bloggers are following PiperSport on Twitter.
• At least one $140,000 airplane has already been sold online through an Internet link, and many people who discovered the PiperSport through social media are in sales conversations with Piper or its dealers.

Today’s news is brought to you by the sweet new mug I just got from the great people of Incisive Media. They bring you the sites of:

• ClickZ.com
• SearchEngineWatch.com
• SearchEngineStrategies.com

It’s the Terra eco-friendly, responsible, reusable thermal porcelain cup with silicon lid. I’m psyched because it says I can put it in the microwave.

That was really nice. Thanks guys!

(If you aren’t aware, I work pretty closely with them. I speak at most of their events and I also write as one of their experts on their sites.)

On to the news…

The article the got me the most excited was, “Google Reader No Longer Just for RSS Feeds“. This is super handy. Until now, RSS readers would only tell you about updated pages that had RSS feeds attached to them. Now you can monitor any page. This can include competitor product pages, industry expert pages (so you can be a resource for them), client site changes, changes in sites that could give you insight into possible new customers… just use your imagination. This is a handy little tool.

Here are all the headlines that I felt were important for you over the last week. Enjoy!

50% of Marketers Shifting Funds From Traditional to Online; Social “Top Priority”

Society of Digital Agencies suggests that 50% of marketers will shift budgets from traditional to online media.

Not only that, but the highest priority for this newly allocated budget is social networks:

Google Reader No Longer Just for RSS Feeds

For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org’s latest products, just type “http://www.google.org/products.html” into Reader’s “Add a subscription” field. Click “create a feed”, and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.

Official Google Blog: Search is getting more social

With Social Search, when we search for [baby sleep patterns], [swaddling] or [best cribs], not only do we get the usual websites with expert opinions, we also find relevant pages from our friends and contacts. For example, if one of my friends has written a blog where he talks about a great baby shop he found in Mountain View, this might appear in my social results. I could probably find other reviews, but my friend’s blog is more relevant because I know and trust the author.

Remove Pages From Google ~Forever Using a 410 Status Code

Last year we started started treating 410 Gone responses as being a stronger signal for indicating when a page no longer exists. So for the situation you describe (where 301 redirects aren’t practical) returning a 410 response is the way to go.

Payvment lets you launch a storefront on Facebook

Their Facebook app is free and dead simple to use. It allows you to sell an unlimited number of items to your Facebook fans, who can now search and purchase your products across any storefront on Facebook.

The photo above is a screen capture of Open Site Explorer. It’s a new tool by SEOMoz that gives you a ton of link information. It’s currently available to anyone. But it will be a subscription tool soon. So you might go take a look at it.

I’ve played around with it and it’s definitely impressive. I found comparing myself to my competitors very eye opening. You might try the same.

There is more information about Open Site Explorer below, along with a lot of other pretty interesting news from the week.

Enjoy!

Gmail: Now Serving Ads Based on Other Emails

Now, instead of serving only marginally relevant ads beside your emails, they’ll go back and look at the last email you viewed and use those ads again.

84% of Marketers to Shift Portion of Direct Marketing Budgets to Social Media

Alterian suggests that 66% of marketers plan to invest in social media over the next 12 months, but only 36% plan to monitor and analyze the success–or failure–of their efforts.

The New York Times Announces Plans for a Metered Model for NYTimes.com in 2011 – Yahoo! Finance

The new approach, referred to as the metered model, will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.

Search Continues to Grow: Showing 46% Growth YoY, comScore

comScore released their search growth report and it showed searches have grown 46% worldwide. The U.S. grew 22% from December 2008 to December 2009, with 22.7 billion searches. China followed with 13.3 billion searches, but only grew 13% year over year.

Yahoo Search Advertisers Rejoice Over New Network Distribution Feature

Yahoo launched a feature named Network Distribution that gives advertisers that control

SEOmoz | One Giant Leap for Link Data: Announcing Open Site Explorer + Page/Domain Authority Metrics

The new tool, Open Site Explorer, makes gathering, sorting and exporting link data easier than ever. It’s built with speed and accessibilty at the forefront and provides a tremendous amount of information about the links to any page or site.

Study on Google Personalized Search & Re-Ranking Shows Minor SEO Changes

We shouldn’t be changing how we approach things ultimately… Above the fold is the real estate that’s prime (what else is new?). It may be the measuring that we will have to adapt. You will need to find ways to check rankings from a few locales and discern a mean average instead of a definitive placement.

A Canonicalizable Tool

The tool is named canonicalizable tool and it basically shows you potential canonicalization issues with your home pages.

Retail Boosts Search Spend in Efficient Frontier’s Q4 2009 Report – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

# SEM spend will grow 15-20% in 2010.
# Market competition should recover, spurring volume expansion with CPC.
# Ad exchange development will continue to align with search
# Bing is expected to grow 30% in 2010, giving them a 6-7% share of paid clicks.

How To Create An Incentive For Visitors To Fan Your Facebook Page (Day 17) – Social media and inbound marketing for non-profits

The FBML “hidden content trick” revealed

Using the Static FBML application, simply add the following tags around the content you want hidden to non-fans.

Google Analytics and Bounce Rate. Do You Have Loyalty Bounces? – SiteLogic – Marketing Logic

If you would like to use this bounce rate, you need setTimeout, and here the code and where to place it:

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-xxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
setTimeout(‘pageTracker._trackEvent(\’NoBounce\’, \’NoBounce\’, \’Over 10 seconds\’)’,10000);

Here are the latest headlines from the last week.

As I look through all these headlines, they all seem particularly interesting in one way or another.

But if I had to pick one that seemed most profound to your business, it would be Kiss Your Phone Leads Goodbye. The article discusses how important it is to return calls quickly from email form queries. I know this to be true in my case. I hate sending something out into the Interweb and then… nothing. Who knows when someone will return your message.

Quickness is extremely important.

Here are all the rest of the articles…
Nielsen Reports on Top Web Brands and Site Usage
Yahoo Adds Feature to Import Google Adwords Campaigns

It has created an easy way for users of the Yahoo paid search platform to import data from their Google Adwords campaigns. In other words, Yahoo is saying “We know how much you use Google Adwords so just ‘copy and paste’ it to us and spend with us. Please!”

Google Says Average AdWords CTR at 2%

Says AdWordsPro:

On the other hand, to give you a point of reference to shoot for, an average CTR is probably in the neighborhood of 2% – meaning that for every 100 impressions, you would have received 2 clicks.

Add Real Time Content to Your Google Maps Listing

you click on the “View report” link under the statistics section of that page. Then you are presented with a box to add a quick real-time message to your business listing (Places Page) on Google Maps.

Google Transfers AdWords Account from Consultant to Client in Dispute

A Google AdWords Help thread has one report of Google confirming that they will often transfer the account to the client, if the client is the one who holds the payment information (credit card) in the account.

Want To Rank High in Google’s Real Time Search? Get More Twitter Followers

Want to rank high in those Google real-time results? It seems like all you need is a lot of followers and you should be set.

Google Gains at Everyone Else’s Expense in Nielsen’s December 2009 Rankings – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

When you compare year-over-year numbers, things are pretty much abysmal for everyone but Google, who gained, and Bing, which remained steady.

Covario Acquires SEO Solutions Firm, Netconcepts – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

$2.5 billion was spent on SEO in the U.S. alone in 2009, according to Forrester Research.

Kiss Your Phone Leads Goodbye – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Delaying your first-dial response time from 5 to just 30 minutes decreases your chances of qualifying the lead by 21 times!

I go back and forth about putting the news here on the blog.

The reason I stopped for a while was that I buried a $10 Amazon gift certificate in a news story one day. All you had to do was comment or email me that you saw it and I’d send you the gift certificate.

No one wrote… not even my mom (who tends to read all my stuff).

So, I got the impression that the news wasn’t particularly helpful.

But, I have a new idea. I thought I’d try it again and put a summary of the news, or the past week, before the news items.

If you have other ideas let me know.

Here’s my take on the past week:

I have two prevailing thoughts tied to one theme: Back to the Past.

Email, and email spam, are getting attention again. I too have been bitten by the email bug. It’s just incredibly powerful. If you have a product that is expensive, or the sales cycle is slow, chances are that the best call to action on your site is to get people on your email list.

Also, here is a January 8, 2009 NYT article that talked about last Christmas’ sales:

After Weak Holiday Sales, Retailers Prepare for Even Worse – NYTimes.com

Industry sales fell 2.2 percent for the holiday shopping season, the biggest decline since at least 1970, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

This year, we are reporting a 4% increase.

So, people bought some more stuff. My experience is that it’s a whole new world.

I really feel an attitude of “Let’s start measuring success from here, ” more so than “Let’s get back to where we were.”

So, there’s my news wrap up. Here are the headlines that jumped out at me:

US Holiday E-Commerce Spend Up 4% Year Over Year

“The 2009 online holiday shopping season was a positive one as its growth rate slightly surpassed our forecast and returned to solidly positive rates after nearly a full year of marginally negative growth,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Among the highlights of the season was the first $900 million online spending day and a strong late season spending surge

Spam Works for Weight Loss

18% of those without weight issues opened the spam emails and 5% actually purchased. Of those who identified themselves as having weight issues, 40% opened the spam and 18% purchased.

Google to Add Mobile ‘Click to Call’ Feature to AdWords

“your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”

Stop Selling Search, Start Selling Performance Marketing – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

You should know that the larger, more sophisticated agencies are already diving head first into performance marketing. They’re embracing the multiplicity of ad exchanges, leveraging the “fresh-out-of-the-oven” demand-side platforms, automating their paid search, experimenting with the emerging social advertising networks, deploying powerful (yet sometimes overstated) tracking solutions for multiple exposure attribution, and even managing plain vanilla affiliate programs.

Email Marketing for Freelancers | FreelanceSwitch

According to a recent Direct Marketing Association study, email marketing’s average return on investment (ROI) is a whopping $45.05 US for every dollar spent. That makes it the highest return of any marketing channel. Even other Internet marketing methods pale with an ROI of $19.94 for every dollar spent.