Today’s New York Times discusses a declining online advertising industry and credits the economic downturn for the industries woes.  The article cites the following statistics:

• According to PubMatic, between the months of March and April prices paid to networks for online ads dropped 23 percent; and for larger publishers the decline was steeper at 52 percent.
• AOL’s display advertising declined by 18 percent, to $191 million.
• Internet ad revenue growth at The New York Times Company slowed to 16 percent in the most recent quarter from 20 percent a year earlier
• WebMD Health and Weather.com experienced shorter buying commitments from advertisers; a result of wanting to test ad products prior to prolonged commitments.

While banner investments on ad networks have declined, search engine marketing appeared unaffected.  Google’s revenue in the United States was up thirty percent from last year, while Microsoft’s and Yahoo!’s online revenue jumped 29 and 9 percent respectively.  A majority of search engine revenue comes from search advertising.

Read the entire article here.

The author of the book The Art of War, Sun Tzu, once said, “Every battle is won before it’s fought.”  With everyone talking about the recession and rising gas prices, it seems that businesses will have to do “battle” in order to get through this downturn.  In my last blog entry, “Recession: Blessing in Disguise?” I talked about the MarketingSherpa report and how businesses can leverage online marketing during these uncertain times.  However, that report has a second part which talks about strategies that marketers are using to get through the slump.  In this blog post, I’m going to talk about those strategies, plus add some data from eMarketer that backs them up. This post will explain how local businesses can use these strategies to their advantage.  It can be your “business battle plan” if you will. (more…)

I read with interest the Wall Street Journal’s article this week, “More Gloom in Newspaper Ad Sales” – in the online edition, of course. Online media and Internet-based search continue to grow at the expense of their offline counterparts, newspapers and magazines. (more…)

Google has announced that it will sell Performics, the search engine marketing arm of Doubleclick.

Read Full Story…

Google’s declining clicks, most recently reported by comScore during its fourth-quarter 2007 earnings release, Google reiterated that the decrease stemmed from algorithmic improvements on the ad-serving end, as well as the reduction of clickable space for AdSense ads. Google said while clicks had decreased, advertiser conversion rates were much higher–partly due to the giant’s requirements that many advertisers improve their ads’ landing pages.

Click here for full article

The Internet has impacted business in a powerful way.  With more information available to the consumer, product options, vendors, and on-demand interaction, the buyer has many options, and so does the seller.  Any business can go global with just a few key strokes.   But, selling via the Internet is more than just putting up a Web site.  As a marketing platform, it poses a challenge for many businesses, whether they are start-ups or established.  It is within this niche that professionals in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firms provide expertise and leadership in leveraging the Internet as a marketing tool for both online and offline strategic initiatives.
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AdSense is a Google program that allows Publishers to display and manage relevent Google ads on their website’s content pages as well as provide Google search to their site users.  The AdSense program is free and can help enhance your search program since it tries to target exactly what your users are looking for.  The AdSense program, however, is limited regarding having the ability to pick and choose what Ads appear on your pages.  In an effort to reduce that limitation and provide additional control and transparency, the Ad Review Center was introduced.

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