US direct and digital advertising expenditures are forecast to reach $163.9 billion in 2011, up 6.2% from 2010 levels, according to a report from the Winterberry Group. Of that total, digital spending is expected to reach $31.6 billion, up 14.0% from the previous year. more

Google Sites led the US explicit core search* market in December 2010, accounting for 66.6% of total searches conducted during the month, followed by Yahoo Sites with 16.0% and Microsoft Sites with 12.0%, according to data from comScore qSearch. more

Your About page is one of the most important pages on your site, says Lisa Banks in a post at the Site Reference SEO blog. Done right, it can help boost rankings and stimulate inbound links, she notes. Banks' interest in About pages was recently stirred by influential blogger Chris Brogan's ... more

Mobile campaigns continue to be a powerful ad channel for marketers, outperforming online advertising by roughly three times across a variety of metrics, including ad awareness, message association, and purchase intent, according to a study by InsightExpress. more

One way to build trust is to position yourself as an authority on topics associated with your product or service. Blogging helps, but any blogger knows that expert blogging demands research, dedication of time, community management, consistent cross-marketing—and it can take months, even years, to gain an appreciative audience. So you say ... more

Only one-half (50%) of B2B marketers formally measure the return of their online marketing investments, but those who do say online is more effective than traditional marketing channels, according to a report by AMR International. more

Though few consumers actually make purchases using mobile devices, smartphones are playing an increasingly important role in shoppers' buying decisions, particularly when they are visiting physical stores, according to a new study by ForeSee Results. more

You've no doubt optimized your site and marketing materials for top keywords, but have you thought about the influence they can wield in less traditional ways? Consistently optimized messaging across all of your company content—from its name and description to your employees' titles to your site content—helps create an image ... more

How does advertising yield improve when targeting digital ads to certain audiences? How much influence does the type of content users are reading when the ad is shown have on yield? This article summarizes the results of an extensive study on the subject. more

The ad recovery is gaining momentum: Total US measured advertising expenditures reached $94.06 billion in the first nine months of 2010, up 6.4% from the same period a year earlier, according to data from Kantar Media. Ad spending in the third quarter was up 8.7% over 3Q09 levels—the largest quarterly ... more

Google's Android mobile operating system (OS) is rapidly gaining market share in the US—particularly among new smartphone buyers—though it hasn't overtaken Apple's iOS, according to a report from The Nielsen Company. more

Though the adoption of emerging Web activities such as social media is still dominated by Millennials, older generations are making sharp gains, according to Pew Research. Moreover, key Internet activities such as email and search are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. more

Online video is becoming more important as a source of business information and as a driver of work-related buying decisions among today's senior executives: 83% are watching more online video today than they were a year earlier and 65% say they have visited a vendor's website after watching a work-related ... more

In a recent guest post at It's All About Revenue, Brian Posnanski shares tips on finding just the right keywords to boost standings in search results. "Keywords are the ingredient that make content searchable and discoverable," Posnanski notes. That's why TrafficPRM—Posnanski's interactive agency—created the Seven Keys to Keyword Research guide to ... more

Digital media is trouncing traditional channels among up-and-coming Millennials: 81% of affluent Gen-Y adults use Facebook every day—roughly double the number who read newspaper content (45%) or watch TV (44%) daily, according to a new study by L2. Moreover, 45% of such consumers read at least one blog every day. more

With the end of the year comes the compulsion to synthesize what we've learned about the ebb and flow of social media in 2010. Toward that end, John Antonios, writing at the Social Media & Personal Branding blog, has made a list of 100 social media tips to ponder for ... more

"[I]n an effort to reach as many customers as possible at minimal financial cost," writes Mark Smith at Chief Marketer, "many marketers overlook the pricey consequences that can result from sending mass, untargeted emails to their entire audience." To help you avoid that outcome, Smith recommends uplift modeling, which predicts how marketing ... more

Retailers, marketers, and service providers are at an ideal point to capitalize on a massive opportunity to elevate the classic brick-and-mortar shopper experience by embracing emerging mobile technologies. Don't miss the opportunity to use these budding technologies to evolve the customer experience and boost profitability for your company. more

Most online adults (61%) say they're aware advertisers use their online browsing history to target ads to them, and roughly two-thirds (67%) say they are opposed to such tactics, even if those tactics help keep Web content free, according to a survey from Gallup and USA Today. more

"Over the last dozen-plus years, unscrupulous SEO [companies] have given the entire search engine optimization industry a bad rep," writes Stoney deGeyter at Search Engine Guide. "It seems like every few months some high-profile person in the Internet world says something about how SEO is snake oil, sending ripples throughout ... more

Today's business executives use a full array of electronic devices for work purposes, but next to the laptop, the smartphone is their device of choice, according to a new survey from Forbes Insights. Younger execs are leading the charge to mobile adoption, particularly in business-related buying, Web searching, and posting ... more

Warning: Social media may be heading for a big crash in 2011, and it could happen because businesses don't know how to measure the ROI of their social media campaigns. Find out how the Fortune 500 use social media, learn the three categories of social media measurement, and discover the ... more

More than three in five Americans (63%) say they ignore or disregard Internet ads, according to a new Adweek Media/Harris Interactive Poll. Internet banner ads are the most ignored (43%), followed by search engine ads (20%). more

"Sometimes I hear the sound of crickets when I stumble across certain blogs written by small-business owners," writes Samantha McCormick at the OrangeSoda blog. "At first glance, the content is good, thorough, and up-to-date, but the page rank is 0 and there are a dozen signs leading me to believe ... more

Some 8% of online adults—or 6% of the US adult population—say they use Twitter, but adoption levels are higher among online African-Americans (18%) and online Latinos (13%), according to a new survey from Pew Research. more