eMarketer has lowered its projection of growth in online advertising over the next several years from what it projected several months ago. eMarketer’s new report says that the revision was made because the old projections were made “before the full impact of the economic slowdown was revealed.” Spending in 2008 is projected to be 23.6 billion dollars, an increase of 11.3 percent. Spending in 2009 is projected to be 25.7 billion dollars, an increase of 8.9 percent. Spending in 2010 is projected to be 28.5 billion dollars, an increase of 10.9 percent. Spending in 2011 is projected to be 32.0 billion dollars, an increase of 12.3 percent. They also project that search advertising will continue to receive the largest amount revenue and continue be receive more than double the next largest, display advertising, from 2008-2013.
Month: November 2008
Live Search Webmaster Center Adds Malware Detection
The Live Search Webmaster Center has been updated with malware detection and simplified authentication. The malware detection will report any pages that Live Search’s crawler has found to be infected with malware. When a malware infection has been removed, a re-inclusion request can be made which “should take days, not weeks, to resolve” according to a post on the Live Search Webmaster Center Blog. The Webmaster Center also reports if any of the pages that are linked from the website have been infected with malware. The simplified authentication process allows the use of one authentication code for multiple sites and removes the need to specify if the whether the XML or HTML authentication method is used.
October U.S. Search Share Results
Nielsen Online today released its rankings of U.S. search share for October. Overall search decreased 2.0 percent year over year to 7.8 billion searches. Google had year over year growth of 8.1 percent and received 61.2 percent of searches. Google’s percentage of searches was it’s second highest reported by Nielsen Online, only surpassed by April of this year when it received 62.0 percent. Yahoo had a year over year decrease of 12.0 percent and received 16.9 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year decrease of 19.0 percent and received 11.4 percent of searches.
Study Finds Increased Internet Use in U.S.
A new study by the Nielsen Company found an increase in the use of and time of use of the Internet in the United States. The study found that 160,069,000 Americans 2 years and older used the Internet monthly in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 4.2 percent from the third quarter 2007. The study also found that the average American 2 years or older spent 27:18 hours a month on the Internet in the third quarter of 2008, up 5.7 percent from third quarter of 2007. The amount of time spent on the Internet by age was: 5:38 hours for 2-11 years old, 12:48 hours for 12-17 years old, 12:59 hours for 18-24 years old, 28:40 hours for 25-34 years old, 37:56 hours for 35-44 years old, 35:24 hours for 45-54 years old, 35:05 hours for 55-64 years old, and 26:39 hours for 65 years and older. Finally, the study found the average American watch 2:31 hours of online video in the third quarter of 2008. The figures were calculated using Nielsen’s Internet panels, which are measured electronically.
Online Advertising Grew 11 Percent in Third Quarter
Online advertising revenue reached 5.9 Billion U.S. dollars in the third quarter, an increase of 11 percent over the same period last year, according to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Third quarter revenue was 2 percent higher than the second quarter of 2008. Revenue for the first nine months of 2008 reached 17.3 Billion U.S. dollars, an increase of nearly 14 percent.
Internet Explorer 8 Delayed
The release of Internet Explorer 8, which was previously scheduled for later this year, will not occur until next year according to a post on the IEBlog. A final public pre-release version will be made available in the first quarter of 2009 and the finalized version will release at some after that. According to the post the final pre-release should behave in the same way that the finalized version will, and any changes that do occur will be clearly explained ahead of time.
Yahoo Becomes Search Provider for T-Mobile USA
Yahoo has reached an agreement to become the default search provider for T-Mobile USA’s web portal according to an Advertising Age article. Yahoo will also deliver advertising to the portal as part of the agreement. Yahoo already has a search agreement with T-Mobile in ten European countries and with AT&T in the United States. Google has agreement with Sprint and Verizon Wireless is currently in negotiations with Google and Microsoft.
Google Introduces New Search Based Keyword Tool
Google has released a new keyword tool that uses search data relevant to a specific site to provide keyword suggestion for advertising and other purposes according to a post on the Inside AdWords blog. The tool looks at a site’s pages and then identifies “keywords that potential customers are searching on to find your products or services.” The tool lists how many searches the keyword receives as well as the amount of competition and suggested bid for that keyword in Google’s AdWords search advertising program. While the tool is designed to work with AdWords, the tool can be used without and AdWords account. The tool currently provides data for United States and United Kingdom, but will expand to additional languages and countries in the “near future” according to Google.
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Stepping Down
Yahoo has announced that CEO Jerry Yang will be stepping down from the position following the appointment of a successor according to a Yahoo press release. The move follows the recent cancellation of Yahoo’s proposed search advertising partnership with Google and a drop in Yahoo’s stock price. Yang, who had been the CEO since taking over for Terry Semel in June of 2007, will return to his old position of Chief Yahoo. Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in the press release that the company is looking for a CEO “who can take the company to the next level.” The New York Times reports that among the possible successors are “Susan L. Decker, Yahoo’s president; Daniel L. Rosensweig, the former chief operating officer of Yahoo who is now a principal at the investment firm Quadrangle Group; and Jonathan F. Miller, the former head of AOL.”
Google Releases Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
Google today released the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (pdf), which details basic search engine optimization techniques. The 22 page guide discusses best practices for title tags, description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, heading tags, quality content, links, images, robots.txt files, and links. According to a post on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, the guide was created because “we thought it’d be useful to create a compact guide that lists some best practices that teams within Google and external webmasters alike can follow that could improve their sites’ crawlability and indexing”. Google also said that they “plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.”