What happened to our predictions for the online sector in 2010?

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.

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