HTTP Cookies and Privacy Concerns

The issue of ‘cookies’ is becoming increasingly important for websites, online marketers and privacy advocates. Cookies have traditionally been used by websites to track visitor activity and repeat interactions, as well as what they do on a website through tools such as Google Analytics. The use of these tracking cookies has become increasingly sophisticated, but online users are also more concerned about their role, leading to privacy concerns and changes to legislation in Europe.

A cookie (aka HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie) is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s compueter or device, or in the web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify it of the user’s previous activity so that repeat behaviour can be tracked (such as by Google Analytics), or advertisers can use cookies to display relevant adverts to web users based on their tracked behaviour.

Although cookies were originally designed as basic tracking mechanisms, they have now progressed beyond this and have become a crucial component for marketers to target advertising and to implement direct marketing techniques to relevant prospects. This tracking activity has raised privacy concerns to an extent that prompted European authorities to take action in 2011. The European Union’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive began to dictate that “explicit consent” must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via cookies. As a result, all websites in the UK, for example, that use tracking cookies, need to make this clear and give visitors the option to block these when they use the website.

This area is increasingly becoming a issue between privacy advocates and web users on the one hand, who don’t want their online activity to be tracked, and online businesses on the other, who want to target and improve their marketing activity. This includes user tracking which many websites now do through tools such as Google Analytics, and targeted advertising which companies can use, from behavioural marketing to remarketing activity – which should increase relevancy and reduce advertising costs.

In the past month, Mozilla announced their intention to include a default setting that disables third-party cookies by default in upcoming releases of their Firefox browser. This prompted the US Interactive Advertising Bureau to state that it will fight the move, which it describes as being “a nuclear first strike against the ad industry”, as without the third party data companies will simply not be able to track users across sessions. Firefox may be hoping that this move will attract more web users to start using their browser and if that proves to be the case, then the other main browsers such as Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, are more likely to follow suit.

This could be a backward step for online businesses, who will lose valuable information and the option to improve the targeting of their advertising. For web users, it can also mean less relevant advertising and a reduced user experience. If you’d like to know more about cookies and how they can affect your online business or privacy, contact us now.

We made 5 predictions for 2011 last January, so here we review these and assess what actually happened during the year:

1) Rising CPCs encourage more creativity: there was certainly a further growth in the average Cost-per-Click (CPC) within PPC advertising campaigns – and in particular on Google Ads (AdWords) – as the space for buying a high ranking position continues to become more competitive. Although markets vary, we estimate that bid prices have risen by around 15% on average, which means that, for most advertisers, the cost of a site visitor continues to rise and therefore conversion rates are becoming more important. The need for creativity applies both to the advertising campaigns and to the website where visitors land, and although there have been some advances in this area, many companies aren’t doing enough yet to test landing pages, content changes, offers and checkout paths to improve conversions. At the advertising source, there is more data now available in Google Ads (AdWords) to help users target their spend to the best areas and also a focus on Quality Score can help keep the cost per click down. However, the popularity of the PPC market is making it still more competitive and the ones who test and improve will survive.

2) Mobile marketing becomes more prominent: although the importance of mobile marketing has been slow to arrive, 2011 was definitely the turning point, with a notable growth in the use of smartphones and significant increases in mobile site visits recorded in website analytics. Google has certainly been encouraging mobile-specific activity through new services and data in AdWords, plus as user behaviour continues to changes, mobiles are becoming a more significant share of the search sector. The overall visitor share from mobiles for most websites is still below 10%, but the trend is now moving upwards at a faster rate and so companies have to think about their mobile marketing activity, including how their website appears on smartphones.

3) Location marketing will be a big new opportunity: as the use of mobile phones increases, so have the opportunities for local business marketing, which is a primary use of phone searches. Smartphone apps that use location targeting are growing, and social media is also developing these options, although sites like Foursquare haven’t quite taken off and Facebook’s location services have faced some privacy issues. Google Places has also gone through some structural changes in the past year and can remain a frustrating system, but local search remains a big opportunity for companies who rely on a localised market.

4) The line between social media and search becomes blurred: this has not been a clear cut trend over the past year, although social media remains the big new opportunity for companies to develop their marketing techniques, as well as being a frustratingly time-consuming process as well! The most notable event was the launch of Google+, their long-awaited social networking tool which is being closely integrated with Google accounts. This service will struggle to gain market share off Facebook (see below) but remains the most obvious way that social and search will work together to influence results – as can already be seen by users logged into Google when searching – as well as provide more signals back to Google on how search results may perform.

5) Video marketing and advertising gains market share: YouTube remains a significant traffic magnet, being one of the most visited sites on the web, and advertising opportunities here have increased so that the service’s owners, Google, are starting to make a profit from the site at last. However, the use of video hasn’t yet seen a significant increase in usage by online businesses that would be expected, mainly due to the perceived barriers to entry and the application of ideas for video use in specific sectors. It looks like this will remain more of an opportunity for those who are comfortable with the medium and can test the potential for their market.

We have made some more predictions for the main trends we expect to see in 2012, in terms of web search and online marketing. The online market continues to develop at a fast rate and new websites or services can change the landscape in a short space of time, but these are our expectations for the next 12 months:

1) Google+ will be central to 2012: with the full launch of Google’s new social networking tool at the end of 2011, Google+ is likely to be a significant factor in 2012, but in what way is too early to tell yet. Initial reports of the growth in users was impressive, but take-up was linked to existing Google accounts and we’ve yet to see how Google+ is being used on a regular basis. The recent launch of business pages is important as a marketing tool, but the main issue for Google is to gain users, and usage, away from Facebook. There’s too much riding on this product for Google to allow it to fail, in the way that Wave and Buzz did, so there are likely to be new developments in 2012 to integrate the Google+ product across all Google services and to promote and incentivise users away from Facebook. At this stage there doesn’t appear to be enough of a ‘pull’ factor for social network users to make the move, but from a marketing point of view, the integration of Google+ (and the associated +1′s) may become a big enough factor in terms of search results for companies to push the service harder with customers.

2) Online shopping sees big growth this year: recent months have seen a further boom in online shopping, to the concern of traditional retailers. Increasing confidence of web users to buy online and find better bargains will continue to boost this sector and give UK retailers more opportunities – and incentives – to develop or improve their online presence. As the market grows it will also become more competitive around price, so the right business and marketing strategy will be vital. Google’s improving Shopping / Product Search service will help to boost this sector and provide new ways for retailers to get their products in front of potential customers.

3) Google Ads (AdWords) targets mobile marketing: as noted above, mobile marketing is becoming a notable sector for search activity now and this is likely to continue in 2012. As a result, we expect Google Ads (AdWords) to provide new ways for advertisers to make the most of this market, from data analysis, advert extensions and possibly new ad formats specifically for smartphones. In addition, the use of call tracking is expected to be enhanced over the coming year, to give advertisers more opportunities to get the most from their mobile marketing activity.

4) The new Google Analytics becomes a core marketing tool: the impressive Google Analytics service has become ubiquitous for business websites over the past year and this will now take another step forward with the full introduction of the new interface in 2012. Although Analytics is becoming more complex to use, the range of services and data being provided is getting even better and provides online businesses with one of their most important marketing tools. The issue for many companies is how to use the data effectively, to identify potential opportunities and to test changes to their marketing or website content. This may require training or consultancy help to get the most from the data, but however it’s done, Analytics can’t be ignored!

5) Social media marketing becomes more sophisticated: for many companies, using social media as a marketing tool remains a mystery or a frustrating use of resources. For many, now that the initial hype is starting to subside, the role of social media marketing will be to develop a suitable strategy that’s manageable and also effective. This means building a quality community of followers, not based on volume but relevancy. It will mean creating content that’s focused on these followers but is also part of an integrated marketing strategy with all other channels. And it will mean considering how social media and search can work together effectively to generate visibility, traffic, interaction and, ultimately, business!

We’ll keep track of these predictions during 2012 and review them again in 12 months time. But for now, what’s your view and do your predictions for the coming year differ? We’d love to hear from you!

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the UK publishes annual figures on Internet advertising spend and trends in the online market. Gone are the days when these summaries were published quarterly, due to cutbacks, but the annual figures continue to provide an insight into how this sector continues to grow whereas most other forms of marketing spend decline or stagnate. The last figures, for 2010, show that UK online advertising spent just over £4bn in the year, which was also an impressive 12.8% growth on a like-for-like basis.

The IAB compiles these figures with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and values the total UK advertising spend in 2010 at £16.6 billion, which shows that the Internet’s market share has reached a record high of 25% (up from 23% in 2009). This also means that £1 in every £4 invested by advertisers is now spent online.

The IAB says that these findings demonstrate that, despite the recession, online advertising continues to perform well and shows healthy growth. Marketers are increasingly using online channels to drive their brand building campaigns, with consumer goods and retail advertisers increasing their investment in online to become two of the top four big spenders in display advertising. This is to capitalise on the medium’s core strengths of reach and engagement as well as accountability.

In 2010 the biggest gain in spend came from display advertising, thanks to a nearly 200% surge in display advertising in a social media environment (on a like-for-like basis) and 91% year-on-year (absolute growth) in video formats. Overall display grew by more than a quarter (27.5%) on a like-for-like basis to a new high of £945.1 million, representing 23% of total online spend (up from 20% in 2009).

Paid-search continues to perform strongly with growth of 8% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis to £2,346 million, representing 57% of total online spend (61% in 2009).

Despite pressure on the housing, recruitment and automotive markets, online classified advertising bounced back in 2010 recording 9.7% growth on a like-for-like basis to £751 million – a share of 18% (19% in 2009).

Mobile advertising has experienced a staggering 116% year on year growth (on a like for like basis), up from 32% in 2009. Advertisers spent £83 million on mobile advertising in 2010, led by the entertainment and media sector, but with encouraging growth from finance, telecoms and consumer goods advertising.

The IAB tracks many drivers of market growth, such as more people being online – according to data from the UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) and Nielsen, by December 2010 the UK’s active online user base had grown to 40.3 million. Also the penetration of broadband access in internet homes is now 98% (source: Kantar Media’s Internet Monitor, December 2010) and 47% of at home UK internet users access the internet with a connection speed of between 2Mb and 8Mb, with 14% accessing online with a connection speed of over 8Mb. (source: UKOM APS/Netview December 2010). In addition to this, social networks now account for 25% of the time spent online in the UK, which is reflected in the growth of display advertising spend as brands are able to tap into the social nature of the web.

If you’d like more information about these figures and the implications for your online advertising plans, please contact us for details.

We made 5 predictions for 2010 last January, so here we review these and assess what actually happened during the year:

1) Pay-per-click advertising opportunities increase: there was probably no question that PPC advertising would continue to grow at a rapid rate, and in Australia this largely means Google Ads (AdWords) which continues to dominate the market. The quarterly IAB figures showed double-digit growth both quarterly and annually, with the search marketing sector showing a strong upward trend – however, this data is estimated as Google doesn’t release these figures and much of their turnover is ‘hidden’ within their Eire billing office. In some ways the PPC opportunities increased through reach and advert formats, but the core of the AdWords offering remains much the same with the main search space becoming increasingly competitive as more companies use this medium. The Yahoo! PPC service continues to be low-key and covers a much smaller share of the market, but this may change once the merger with Microsoft is completed (see below).

2) The Bing-Yahoo merger takes effect: the ongoing acquisition of Yahoo’s search service by Microsoft developed during 2010 and both the natural search and PPC services on Yahoo! started to display Microsoft’s results by the year end – at least in the US. This rollout will continue into 2011 and is expected to happen in the UK during the first half of 2011. Early reports from the new merged PPC model in the US have been limited, and although Microsoft / Bing appears to be gaining some market share there, there is still some way to go before they significantly challenge Google.

3) Personalised search impacts search marketing: there has been no data published by Google into the level of adoption of personalised search, although this is likely to be more extensive now than a year ago through a gradual ‘creep’ of this facility for anyone using a Google account. Although some of the tools that were originally provided to searchers to personalise their results have disappeared, Google is undoubtedly tracking individual’s search behaviour and site’s visited to help adapt search – and paid search – results. The more notable change during 2010 was the introduction of Google Instant results, which is likely to change the way people search by generating suggestions and instantly displaying changing results as users type or adapt their search on the screen. Changing search behaviour is also likely to impact search marketing activity, although the underlying targeting of relevant search traffic remains the same basic aim.

4) Twitter’s make or break year: 2010 really didn’t go either way for the popular micro-blogging site. Twitter certainly survived any acquisition activity, at least for the time being, and became ever more popular as a communication tool, although many companies have still to see the real benefits of this. Twitter signed deals with Microsoft and Google to integrate content within the search engine results, and also started to offer ‘Promoted Tweets’ as a first move into generating advertising revenue from the massive user base. However, this balance between commercialisation and the whole premise of this service has yet to be met but a recent funding injection of $200m may herald the launch of further new services in 2011.

5) Local search options see new developments: local search has certainly gained more opportunities in 2010 and is expected to grow further in 2011 through the use of social networking tools (see below). The biggest change from Google in the past few months was the way in which local search results are now presented, with a closer integration between the Google Places listings and the optimisation of a website. For locally-targeted business, search remains a huge opportunity for many and the new features in Google Places (including Google Hotpot) as well as the use of mobile technology is something that should be a core part of their marketing strategy.

We have made some more predictions for the main trends we expect to see this year in terms of web search and online marketing. As usual, the online market continues to develop at a fast rate and new websites or services can change the landscape in a short space of time, but these are our expectations for 2011:

1) Rising CPCs encourage more creativity: the gradually increasing Cost-per-Click (CPC) within PPC advertising campaigns – notably on Google – means that companies have to become more creative to get the best results from their advertising spend. This means getting more targeted with the use of search terms and also increasing the conversion rate from the visitors to the site. With the former, Google already provides a good collection of tools to improve the targeting of an AdWords campaign and to test the best approaches, plus new data segmentation and keyword tools introduced in 2010 should provide more focus. When it comes to conversions, the use of website analytics and conversion testing tools can help companies improve their conversion rates and so maintain the cost-effectiveness of their search engine marketing activity, despite more competitors entering the field.

2) Mobile marketing becomes more prominent: we’ve predicted this before several times and it still hasn’t really happened yet, so will 2011 be the changing point? The signs are certainly there, the technology is in place and the use of Internet-capable mobile phones is rapidly growing. It seems to be more of the mindset of advertisers to harness this new area, particularly for local advertisers, yet with the combination of social media tools (see below) and the integration of PPC advertising on the mobile platform, the opportunities are there. It’s now more a question of the creativity of using mobile marketing and, in some cases, adapting websites to be more accessible on mobile phones, which will herald the rapid growth of this sector, which is forecast by some to grow at a faster rate than the initial take-up of web usage.

3) Location marketing will be a big new opportunity: in the same way that local search marketing has developed over the past few years, companies that are targeting a local catchment area now need to take advantage of location tools – that are accessed through mobile phones and via social networking sites – to attract new business. The initial use of sites like Foursquare started to gain some traction, but the launch of Facebook Places at the end of 2010 is likely to really shake up the market for local businesses. As users of these social networking services identify their location to friends, companies can now use this geo-targeting to provide offers and rewards in a flexible and targeted way that hasn’t been possible before.

4) The line between social media and search becomes blurred: as the previous 2 predictions have shown, we are expecting big changes for this year to come from mobile marketing and social media tools. Social media – now dominated by Facebook – is undoubtedly changing the way people use the web and therefore it provides new opportunities for advertisers, although few have yet to find a solution that can be as cost-effective as search marketing. However, social networking tools are clearly going to develop, by introducing new tools and services to users and advertisers, and therefore can’t be ignored. Microsoft’s Bing search results are now integrated within Facebook, while Google is looking at ways to get more involved in the social networking sector and is therefore likely to become a bigger player, either by innovation or acquisition. Google has also confirmed that social media ‘signals’ are now being used to some extent within search results, so that companies need to consider how to use search and social together, in the most cost-effective way.

5) Video marketing and advertising gains market share: although still a relatively small share of the online advertising sector, video advertising is growing at a rapid pace and provides many new opportunities for advertisers to reach their market in different ways – either through the use of the medium of their websites, or through viral marketing, or by advertising to the online video audience. Google has provided new advertising opportunities and tools through YouTube so that companies can target this massive user base, although of course targeting of the right audience remains essential. Video can also be used as an information or marketing tool on a website, and although different techniques have been tested over the past few years, companies need to find the best use of this medium to suit their market and users.

Recent articles from The Marketing Workbench

The Marketing Workbench is our regular web marketing blog covering news and comment on Internet marketing events and trends. If you want to keep track of current stories you can visit this section of our website on a regular basis, or set up an RSS feed. These are just some of the items posted over the past month:

• Online ad value now exceeds newspapers
• Twitter raises $200m funding
• New enhancements in Google Ads (AdWords)
• Automated Rules for Google Ads (AdWords)
• Skipping Ads on YouTube

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s issue and found some useful information for your business. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.

The first decade of Web Marketing Workshop, 2000-2010

A lot of changes have happened in the online world since we first launched Web Marketing Workshop in the UK in 2000. Ten years ago, online business was just starting to develop as a significant marketing channel, despite the dot.com boom and bust!

These are some of things that were happening a decade ago:

• In the UK, 27% of households (19.5 million) had Internet access in September 2000, which meant that the country ranked 3rd in the world in terms of total Internet users, behind the US and Japan. Today, over 80% of households have access to the Internet but the country now ranks 8th in terms of total users.
• 30% of users in the UK had broadband access in 2000, compared to dial-up access.
• The culmination of the so-called ‘Dot com’ boom and bust period had affected many websites and investors earlier in 2000 and resulted in a reality check in the growth forecasts and development of commercial websites ‘ notable ‘failures’ at the time included boo.com in the UK, pets.com in the US, as well as Go.com and Infospace.
• Some of the popular search engines at the time included Lycos, AltaVista, Excite, Direct Hit (purchased by Ask Jeeves).
• Google was a relatively new player in the search market, having launched in 1997, but it was beginning to gain market share and signed a deal to power Yahoo searches in 2000 as Yahoo had begun to realise that their human-edited directory was starting to fall behind the rapid growth in new website launches.
• GoTo was developing the original paid search service and gaining wide coverage on many search engines, except for Google. However, paid search was still seen as an unwelcome commercial intrusion into search engine services by many people. GoTo was eventually rebranded as Overture and then bought by Yahoo several years later.
• Some search engines, such as Ask Jeeves and Looksmart, also offered a paid inclusion service to get editorial listings appearing in search results, plus Yahoo introduced a paid submission fee to be considered for their directory listings in 2000.
• Google launched AdWords in 2000 and without the level of fanfare or comment that new launches from Google receive these days! AdWords was originally offered on a cost-per-impression basis, before it later changed to a cost-per-click model and started become more widely used around 2002.
• In the wider world, September 2000 saw the United Nations Millennium Summit being held in New York, marking the largest meeting of world leaders in history.
• In the UK, anger about fuel taxes led to blockades of many refineries and fuel depots, leading to petrol shortages.
• And, of course, in Sydney there was the small matter of the 2000 Olympic Games being held in September!

It’s difficult to visualise how the online world will be in another 10 years but there’s sure to be more significant changes in trends and market leading websites. You can keep up with the latest developments through our monthly newsletter, web marketing blog or Twitter account, and Web Marketing Workshop will be here for the next 10 years, supporting our customers to get the most from their online businesses.

During February the ongoing Microsoft and Yahoo! ‘Search Alliance’ was given the official go-ahead by both the European Union and the US Department of Justice. Microsoft will now acquire the Internet search and search advertising businesses of Yahoo! under a 10-year exclusive license and, soon after this announcement, the company launched its new Internet smartphone product onto the market.

Firstly, the Search Alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo! has now got the green light to develop new and better search services to try to take on the market dominance of Google. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic search results (powered by Bing) and also the paid search results, which will be powered by adCenter. Eventually all of Yahoo!’s PPC search services will be managed through the better adCenter system and probably not before time!

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments, with Yahoo!’s sales team exclusively supporting high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. The full impact of these changes are likely to be seen by the last quarter of the year.

When Microsoft and Yahoo first agreed to combine their search services in July 2009, the market share of Google went down to 88.95% while that of “Microhoo” went up to 9.12%. This was very encouraging for the executives at Microsoft and Yahoo!, but the real question is whether this combined force can make a bigger impact into Google’s current level of usage and market share. There’s no definitive answer to that, but in order to compete with and surpass Google at its own game “Microhoo” has to innovate constantly and learn from the changing search dynamics.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to enhance its mobile technology and attempts to defy critics who say that its days are numbered in the rapidly growing smart phone market. On 15th February Microsoft launched its ambitious new mobile platform that is a major departure from its existing Windows Mobile offering. The new platform effectively scraps Windows Mobile 6.x with a completely revamped user interface and more tightly defined integration with devices and network.

Analysts say that the new Windows Phone 7 Series as a radical departure for Microsoft in terms of user-interface design, while also bringing something different to the mobile market. The company wants to compete against the iPhone, and similar products from Google Android and Samsung, but they are taking quite a radical move away from these products in the hope to gain significant share of this market.

The introduction of the new Windows Phone 7 Series won’t happen until the end of the year, and many have wondered whether Microsoft could become a factor in the mobile marketplace amid its declining market share. Observers said they were surprised and impressed by the progress Microsoft has made, but it remains to be seen to what level Microsoft will succeed. For this to happen they will have to prove that it’s stable, works very well and delivers on the partner integration Microsoft have promised.

If you would like more information about how the Microsoft and Yahoo! Search Alliance can help the marketing of your business please contact us.

Recent figures published by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in Australia show that the online advertising sector continued to buck the trend seen by the wider advertising market and recorded further healthy growth in 2009, with a 9% year-on-year increase to record a total spend of $1.87bn to the end of December.

The results from the quarterly Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER), compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), also showed that for the three months ended 31 December 2009, the total expenditure was $513m – the largest fourth-quarter recorded and an increase of $50.5m, or 10.9% from the fourth-quarter of 2008.

The IAB says that the continued growth of online advertising expenditure comes at a time when the total advertising industry is expecting a decline of up to $900m in the Australian marketplace for 2009 due to the impact of the global financial crisis. This shows that many companies are not cutting back so much on their online marketing spend as in other areas, or that new companies are starting to use online advertising in some form.

The general display advertising and search sectors both performed well for the full year, with search and directories advertising accounting for just short of $1bn or 50.5% of total expenditure, representing a growth of 17% year on year. This is mostly comprised of Google Ads (AdWords) expenditure, which dominates this category and although Google doesn’t release their figures, the estimate is based on the same formula used by PwC in their regular surveys.

Spend on display advertising also grew in the year, up by 7.2% and it accounted for almost $500m or 26.6% of the total expenditure for the 12 months. However, classified advertising is the one sector that continued to lose share and saw a slight decline of 2.3% year on year, accounting for 22.9% of total expenditure for the year.

Within the general display figures, email based advertising comprised $9.3m of advertising expenditure for the last quarter, up from $7.9m in the previous quarter. Video based advertising increased its share of advertising expenditure from $4.7m to $5.3m for the same period.

Little change was reported in the pricing methods for online advertising expenditure, with the Direct Response pricing method comprising 26% in General Display advertising and CPM 74%. CPM pricing is based on a straight Cost per Thousand pricing methodology, sponsorship, or CPM-like Pricing, while direct response based pricing is based on a non-CPM display methodology. This may include any pay per click, pay per sale, pay per action or pay per lead.

If you’d like to know more about these figures, or how online advertising could improve your business, please contact us now.

What do we expect to see as the main trends for this year that will impact web search and online marketing activities? Here are our predictions for some of the key developments expected this year.

1) Pay-per-click advertising opportunities increase:? PPC advertising – and Google Ads (AdWords) in particular – is now a much more prominent part of the search experience and a powerful marketing tool used successfully by many companies. Google is already experimenting with new advert display formats, such as local maps, images and video, partly to improve the user experience and also to gain more revenue. These formats will become more widespread this year as Google also develops the service to counter the launch of the combined and improved Microsoft/Yahoo PPC service, and overall, the opportunities for advertisers will be increased to help expand the impact and reach of this fast-growing form of advertising.

2) The Bing-Yahoo merger takes effect:? as noted above, the acquisition last year by Microsoft of Yahoo’s search service will begin to take effect this year once the regulatory and structural issues get resolved. In theory, the combination of the next 2 most popular English-language search tools after Google should be significant and create more of a challenge to Google’s dominance, although the quality of the search results and the services being offered will need to be considerable to change inbuilt user habits and make a dent on Google’s market share. As part of the merger, it is hoped that a new and improved PPC service will be launched so that advertisers have a better alternative to Google Ads (AdWords) with an improved user friendly interface and more reliable results than is currently offered by Yahoo.

3) Personalised search impacts search marketing:? the low key introduction of Google’s personalised search results for all web users (rather than just those signed into their user accounts) has passed relatively unnoticed in the press but this could start to have a significant impact on the performance of their search results this year. From a search engine optimisation perspective, it will become harder to track the ranking visibility of a website, although the important measure of a successful SEO campaign will remain the increase in search engine referral traffic as a result of any marketing investment on the site.

4) Twitter’s make or break year:? 12 months is a long time for the Internet and the growth of Twitter in the past year has clearly shown this. The micro-blogging service has attracted a huge amount of press coverage and online comment, but the next 12 months will really determine whether Twitter becomes a significant marketing tool or fades from view as the next fad comes along. Twitter needs to start making money from its growing user base, or it will be an acquisition target. Outside of a hard-core of users, it also needs to demonstrate to businesses that it can be an effective marketing tool that is worth the input time. It certainly can’t be ignored if it continues to grow, and it’s likely that the service will become more sophisticated this year to offer users a better return, which will also place the service on a more secure financial footing.

5) Local search options see new developments:? we’ve predicted improvements for small companies through local search marketing in the past and the opportunities continue to improve, particularly for those impacted by the new generation of Internet mobile phones. It is likely that new PPC opportunities will be introduced for local businesses to help improve the focus of their online budgets, plus the increasing localisation of social networking services will also open up new opportunities for companies to reach their target markets.