Internet Retailer summarizes two recent reports: State of Search Engine Marketing Report 2010 by consulting firm Econsultancy.com Ltd in conjunction with the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, and Q1, 2010 Search Advertising Results: Analysis, Interpretation and Forecasts” by search engine marketing services firm NetEiixir.

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Jonathan: “The banner is the grandfather of online advertising. It has spawned different sizes, formats, and targeting over the years, but like many grandfathers, it still has an old-fashioned way of behaving, especially in regards to trading.”

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Nathan Safran, senior research analyst and Seth Dotterer, senior director of marketing, both from Conductor, inc. studied 88,758 keywords, on which the retailers spent more than $2.4 million per day for paid search ads. They evaluated those keywords in natural search. This piece details the results and chronicles how to use the results from a ppc campaign to tailor natural search.

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Jeremy Goldkorn founded the popular China media website Danwei.org, and acts as editor and publisher. The site has tracked the changes in China’s media and Internet on a daily basis since 2003 and also produces video interviews with people in culture and the media in China. Here, in this piece in fastcompany.com magazine, he outlines the copykat sites that have sprung up in China.
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57% of online retailers plan to spend more on e-commerce technology in 2010, including 49% whose investment priorities cover new or upgraded e-commerce technology platforms, Forrester Research Inc. says in the study, “2010 U.S. Online Retail Technology Investment Outlook.” The report is based on a survey of 291 online retailers in the fourth quarter of 2009. Other popular areas of technology investment this year include content management tools, multichannel order management integration, system security and mobile commerce. Among the goals underlying many investment plans this year are improved marketing capabilities, including a strong focus on social marketing as well as search and other forms of online marketing, the study says. See the summary report here.

Dixon Jones, founding director of Receptional Internet Marketing, writes in SES magazine that the most successful companies…”use web architectures that do not make themselves inadvertently blind to the search engines. They build sites that can develop over time to feed a search engine rather than starve it of the thing it craves most – data, information, and knowledge.” He talks about shifting resources to influencing non-monetized traffic to your site. Read the print article here.

Judith Lewis, search director at i-level, Europe’s largest digital communications agency, discusses SEM in this article for SES Magazine. She notes that “Search engine marketing, while a complex discipline, is part math, part psychology, part marketing, and part creativity” It really isn’t a black art, although some would say that it is an occult science.

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The shift is on from reputation-based deliverability toward engagement-based factors for bulk emailers. Reputation-based strategies are no longer enough; one must get readers to actually engage one’s email, by either clicking “this is not spam”, or otherwise interacting with an email. Some of the major webmail players are now taking into account how well a marketer engages the reader. Read Michelle Eichner’s account:

online, here

in print, here

Internet Retailer reports that two studies, one by Ecoconsultancy.com and the other by NetElixir suggest that SEM marketing is on the rise as the economy improves. Conversion rates and average order values are on the rise. However, this news must be tempered with the fact that CPC is on the rise.

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Jon Myers, of Search Engine Strategies, talks about why you can’t ‘set it and forget it’. One must not be content with a bucket of stale search terms. Targeted keywords should be an evolving list. We are aiming at a moving target, after all. Likewise, bid strategies need to be tailored to the account.

Read the print article here

Check out John’s video here