Recession-defying, downturn-destroying, money-making – online shopping has had a good year.
According to the IMRG/Capgemini Sales Index, while Christmas day 2007 saw £84 million spent online, in 2008 more than £103 million was expected to be spent in the 24 hour period.
Ideally, any would-be competitive company in Britain will have been allocating a portion of its marketing budget to the internet for years now.
However, a sizable number of firms 
And lo, we did decide to make a Christmas search engine quiz as a festive alternative to a serious blog post. The answers are at the bottom of the page but if you are tempted to cheat – remember Santa is watching!
Do post your score below and let’s see who the festive experts (festperts? No, that sounds really wrong) are! Can you get all 15?
An admittedly cynical slant on Santa
Dear Santa,
I hope you are well and Mrs Santa too. This year I have been very good and would like a WiiTM, WiiTM accessory kit and additional WiiTM controller.
As per our usual deal, if you proceed to the kitchen you will find one mince pie and one glass of sherry (the bottle is in the cupboard above the fridge if you are having a rough night, just make sure there is enough left for Granny to have a glass after lunch).
A friend of mine recently told me that his new boss refuses to market the firm’s website because she thinks internet advertising is a ‘flash in the pan’.
When my poor friend eventually got a word in edgeways, he said he understands the value of the internet as a marketing platform but needs to explain this to his employer.
Therefore, to help him and any other people whose bosses need a little encouragement I have compiled a list of what I consider to be the most compelling recent sector information. This collection of research should help anyone making a case for internet promotional work.
If your boss still won’t take their marketing online, I would recommend looking for an employer with more longevity!
Growth
The numbers vary slightly from analysis to analysis but the trend is always up. Even within the current economic climate, it is widely held that the amount spent by companies (tell your boss that includes competitors!) will continue to rise.
A report released by Research and Markets forecasts growth in online advertising of 31.4 per cent this year, following high expenditure in 2007. According to the analysis, last year the internet was the fastest-growing medium for advertising.
The Internet Advertising Bureau reports that spending on web advertising rose to £1,682.5 million in the first six months of the year. This is growth of more than 20 per cent on the same period in 2007.
Research by the European Interactive Advertising Association reveals 81 per cent of advertisers say they have increased the amount they spend through online promotions this year. Those questioned forecast a further 16 per cent growth in spending levels next year and 17 per cent in 2009.
Effectiveness
Research agency eMarketer suggests the web is so useful because it engages with consumers by encouraging interaction. Furthermore, it explains, internet marketing allows firms to communicate with prospects through the entire buying cycle.
A study by the Internet Advertising Bureau finds web-based advertising is the main source of consumer brand engagement for retailers. It suggests online marketing creates 40 per cent of consumer relationships, compared to just 19 per cent for TV ad spend.
Numbers
The web is becoming increasingly popular as a marketing platform because results can be measured and consumers engaged, but also because of the rising number of people online.
Analysis conducted at the start of the year by Nielsen shows more than 85 per cent of the world’s web-accessing population have made at least one purchase online. This, it noted, is a 40 per cent rise over the two years to January.
In July alone, these consumers spent a whopping £4.8 billion, according to the IMRG/Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index August 2008. That is an incredible £79 for every single person in the UK.
Yahoo! has launched its own analytics tool, promising real-time reports to 13,000 small business customers, with a further role out in 2009.
Following its acquisition of IndexTools earlier this year, the search engine pledges to make visitor analysis available rapidly. This, it claims, will allow marketers to respond quickly to stats on sales, traffic sources and page views.
Annoyingly, at the moment newbies trying to sign up to the service can’t. Instead they have to join a waiting list where they will receive updates (it is a bit like Virgin Galactic but not quite as exciting).
Perhaps because there is no chance of product reviews yet, the blogosphere has instead been buzzing with criticisms of the way Yahoo! is rolling out this important new product. It is possible that the new brand has already been damaged to a degree by impatient commentators.
Too Little…?
A wide number of people have slammed this as being simply a two-years too-late copy of Google Analytics. Yahoo! has launched this in a desperate attempt to keep up with the bigger boy in the playground but has missed the boat, some claim.
However, I am not sure I agree with these criticisms. Analytics tools are the obvious next step for search engines and if Yahoo! is to have any hope of competing with Google, it had to develop one. Real-time reporting is also a pretty big deal.
Too Late…
It is a shame that the engine took so long to create a product which is such a staple tool for many marketers. Top marks to the engine for sorting the relaunch so quickly after the acquisition but many search marketers are expressing ambivalence to a new product which seems to only have one main benefit (real time reporting) compared to the Google tool they have been using for years.
Roll-Out Slow Not Slick
I think Yahoo! has failed to sweep the market up into a fever of enthusiasm because its exciting relaunch is not available to users. The few existing IndexTools users and Yahoo! Small Business customers are the only ones who can see this beta product in action. Why announce it then?
The first thing every sector worker wants to do when they hear about the product is to read reviews and share stories but instead it could be months before the average marketer gets to have a play. By then, of course, he or she may have forgotten about the product anyway. Yahoo!’s marketing here has let it down.
Having said that, Dennis R Mortensen, Yahoo!’s director of data insights, described it as “not a free-for-all-come-and-get-it launch but a carefully planned controlled access launch”. So now you know…
However…
Yahoo! Analytics could be a really useful contrivance. It is always a useful thing in this sector to be able to compare data to assess accuracy and, if the real-time updates work, then this will be an extraordinarily useful tool.
Sometimes publicity, product launches or unanticipated events mean websites need to react rapidly to their users to ensure they are positioned for maximum sales, making Yahoo! Analytic’s capabilities essential.
It is also undeniable that competition within the market always helps customers and I anticipate Google will feel under pressure to increase the development of its own analytics tool to retain users. Whichever product emerges as the most popular, we the users will benefit.
This weekend will be the first trial of Gmail’s new Mail Goggles product! Users who sign up can no longer stagger in late on a Friday or Saturday night and send emails they later regret because the mail provider will demand they take a sobriety test.
People trying to email at potentially inebriated times will be faced with messages like: “It’s that time of day. Gmail aims to help you in many ways. Are you sure you want to send this? Answer some simple math problems to verify.”
Of course, if you are more likely to be boozy on a Sunday night, you can adjust the settings to provide maximum protection against drunkenly emailing ex’s, bosses and your mother.
I will say this for Google, giant firm seeking an online monopoly it may be, but giving free time to its engineers and mathematicians to allow them to come up with their own products is genius.
Just need them to fix drunken text messaging issues next!
Google has reversed a decision which saw it previously refuse to carry paid search adverts for a pro-life Christian group when the searcher types in “abortion”.
The Christian Institute, the group in question, (which must have received greater levels of traffic over this event than it ever has before because of this story) approached the search engine earlier this year requesting paid adspace.
Google refused, on the grounds that its policy on paid search advertising prevents it from mixing religion and abortion content.
Tricky. The group responded by asserting its free speech rights had been affected, noting that the search engine allowed advertising from abortion clinics and pro-choice websites which criticised religion.
Now Google has agreed to display these adverts, pledging to allow a “level playing field”.
A spokesperson said: “The issue of abortion is an emotive subject and Google does not take a particular side.”
Whatever your opinions on abortion or indeed any contentious issue, the search engine must exercise some editorial control regarding contentious subjects in order to protect its reputation.
To pick an extreme example, it could not place an advert for the BNP without provoking a storm of criticism (for our US readers, the BNP is a far right UK political party). Having said that, I have never seen a political advert, though, so perhaps it is avoiding politics altogether.
Then I began to ponder what contentious issues Google would carry adverts for. A search for “personality test” did not throw up any paid search results for the Scientologists.
However, a search for “scientology” or “L Ron Hubbard” brings up sponsored links for the religion many people consider to be a dangerous cult.
To be fair to Google, if it were to decide on a moral code and impose that upon its paid ads, it would be essentially forcing those principles upon the millions of people using its service.
It might seem fine to me to ban certain subjects from receiving additional visibility, but then many people could disagree. It would be problematic, maybe even downright wrong for the engine to inflict its views on people, even if the alternative is to give page time to contentious areas.
Currently, there are demonstrations against Google and Microsoft taking place in India.
This is because they have been carrying paid ads for tests which claim to inform expectant mothers what sex their unborn babies are, although they have both now ceased to do so.
India has issues with female babies being terminated and has outlawed products which purport to tell the parent what gender they are carrying.
How difficult must it be for a company this big to keep on top of local moral stance and law? Yet clearly it must do so – its corporate reputation would be harmed if it encouraged locally illegal behaviour – imagine if a search engine began advertising rabbit guns to British teens!
It is not just search portals that can be accused of bad practice. Earlier this year, Justin Williams, the assistant editor of the Telegraph Media Group, slammed the Guardian for buying sponsored links for the keywords “Madeleine McCann”.
“There is no phrase too sensitive, no taste that is too poor … apparently,” he sneered.
Where an organisation buys its adspace can clearly affect its reputation, just as it could potentially harm the search engine or website displaying the promotion.
I think what interests me about the entire debate is that these are issues few people could have predicted in the early stages of search. It makes me wonder how Google, or any organisation which publishes advertising, will retain its moral stance when ethics are personal and localised but the internet has no borders.
You may have noticed that, while Britain’s investment bankers may be facing a lean Christmas, SEOptimise has expanded its team. This is because, despite the credit squeeze, the search sector is growing rapidly.
Recession, it seems, happens to other industries – the rise in search marketing budgets is so inevitable that even with a slow or fall in economic growth, the sector continues to expand.
I am not even offering you anecdotal evidence. Research published by Jeffries and Company warns tough economic times are causing marketers to reconsider their online marketing budgets.
However, it suggests marketers are not looking to reduce their budgets but to ensure their money works as hard as possible.
“More and more advertisers are allocating a greater level of their budgets to more performance-oriented channels, particularly search, and away from brand building formats such as display and sponsorships,” the report states.
As budgets falter, many marketers are under pressure to justify both their spending and their jobs to employers, and a search marketing campaign could be the way to do that.
Jeffries argues search works because it is performance-based, offers clear returns and those returns are excellent.
In a difficult economic period, companies cannot simply bury their heads and wait for it all to go away, there has to be some marketing activity to keep them in the minds of their customers.
With effective search marketing, a firm can carefully control the amount it spends and generate business despite the slump.
I encourage potential search engine optimisation (SEO) clients to read up on the sector through the internet. I want firms to understand the role of our service so they can appreciate the benefits resulting from it.
However, there is a vast amount of information, opinion and sometimes startling-opposed conjecture scattered across the web and for a newbie, it can be pretty difficult to figure out what is sense and what is silly – or even potentially damaging.
If you are considering investing in search engine promotions to boost your businesses online, here are two good articles straight from the search engine’s mouths, covering both SEO and search engine marketing.
Google: Ethical SEO can benefit a website
Google recently admitted cautious approval of SEO agencies. It warned webmasters to be careful what company they use to avoid being penalised because of cowboy tactics – a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly.
Yahoo!: Use Common Sense for Search Marketing
I like Yahoo!’s search marketing blog, it always offers very simple but useful commentary for new starters. This recent post holds nothing groundbreaking for those already working in the sector but is an excellent advice source for businesses considering search marketing. From bidding on the right keywords to filling pages with acceptable content, the blog outlines some basic search marketing tenets.
Google’s recent tenth birthday has left me (and pretty much everyone with an opinion on search) pondering the extent of its power. In its short commercial life the engine has changed from quirky student project to a multi-billion pound business. It has spawned language developments, helped create the sector in which I work and inserted fingers into a startling number of pies – admittedly never quite replicating the success of its search facility.
So just how much power has it drawn to itself? Some people now access the web through their Google browser and check their GoogleMail before catching up with friends on GoogleTalk and maybe browsing YouTube (a Google property). The majority of web users in Britain frequently use the search engine to navigate the web, according to several studies.
If the internet is an extension of the world, Google is one of the top demigods. It can even punish sinners, throwing websites out of the top results if firms transgress its definition of acceptable search engine optimisation.
Many of us rely hugely on Google, to the exclusion of other, similar services. If I want to read a newspaper I don’t buy one, I visit Google News. If it were to suddenly prioritise right-wing news over the left, many people would fail to notice, at least for a while. Certainly a large number of my friends who give no thought the how exactly it picks the results it presents would probably not notice a political slant to the information they were presented with.
Now Google is putting 200 years-worth of newspapers online – a fantastic development which will fascinate people and facilitate research. This can only help further knowledge and yet it is one more tool we are likely to start relying on and which Google will control.
These thoughts are not unique and I am certainly not the first commentator to address them. I am also not proposing we do anything about it – the only thing more worrying to me than a commercial entity with all this power is a specific government in charge.
Google has not really abused its power so far. However, it is now a long way from the young firm sticking it to Microsoft. Don’t be evil, Google, you are much too big.
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