Local Web Ad Spending to Hit $13 Billion in 2008, up 50 Percent

If you are not taking advantage of the Internet for generating leads or selling your products and services then read the information in the following article from ClickZ Network. Every savvy business owner must realize that it is important to establish a budget for online marketing. If you don’t know what to do or how to do it, you need to contact a marketing specialist to help you develop an online marketing plan based on your objectives, target market plus money and resources available.

Local Web Ad Spending to Hit $13 Billion in 2008, up 50 Percent
By Kate Kaye, The ClickZ Network, May 30, 2008

As has been forecast for all of online advertising, local Web ad revenues are poised for growth. A new report shows local online ad spending is rising at a 50 percent clip, and will hit $13 billion this year.

Borrell Associates pegs 2007 local online ad revenues at $8.7 billion in its new "What Local Media Web Sites Earn: 2008 Survey" report. Double-digit growth over the next year and a half is projected, based on a survey of over 3,000 local media properties. Following that 18-month upswing, however, Borrell expects growth rates to taper into the single digits by 2012.

Among the reasons for the expected increase is the sluggish economy, suggests Borrell. In short, local advertisers want more cost efficient alternatives to traditional media buys, and they're finding them online.

The report suggests newspaper publishers have a head start on other online media entries, though the others will continue to nip at their heels. Newspaper sites grabbed over $2 billion in local Web ad revenue in 2007, more than all other local online media companies combined, according to the report. One thing benefiting online paper publishers is expansion of their ad client base. Nearly 60 percent of those dollars came from Web-only advertisers, the report shows. Some sectors paper publishers are reaching out to include financial services and smaller local retailers, said Borrell Associates VP Peter Conti.

"In the past they had overlooked a lot of the categories," he continued.

Other positive moves include creating standalone sites and new ad and content products.

They're offering more products and more information, and in some cases, even developing new sites that have nothing to do with the old media," said Conti.
Still, ad revenue collected by paper sites represents about 25 percent of total local online ad market share, compared to 44 percent four years ago. Conti chalks this up to a lingering fixation on maintaining dwindling classified ad revenues. Referring to classifieds as an "Achilles heel" for paper sites, the report notes 63 percent of total classifieds in 2007 were online classifieds.

Though newspaper publishers have their own set of problems to contend with, they could have a leg up in the ad sales department, according to the report. It notes newspaper publishers in total have an estimated 3,800 sales reps dedicated to selling online offerings, and larger outfits may have up to three dozen dedicated online ad salespeople.

"Most financially successful sites are the ones that have their own independent [online] sales force," said Conti. "They can put together the kinds of packages and the advertising that's necessary to sell online without worrying about cannibalization or lack of focus."

Local radio sellers could learn something from this approach. The report suggests online radio revenues are hindered by the common use of terrestrial radio salespeople for online ad sales. Although the firm found online radio revenues rose about 50 percent from $125 million in '06 to $189 million in '07, Borrell anticipates growth to slow to about 35 percent this year.

According to the firm, TV stations it surveyed "nearly doubled their Web sales forces in 2007 and are expecting to do the same in 2008 -- though 'doubling' often means going from one rep to two."

In conjunction with the proliferation of broadband access, television's video prowess gives it a boost as Web video consumption grows. "Their traditional background is bringing audio and video to the table," said Conti, noting video content and offerings such as directories with video ad offerings "bring in a lot higher CPMs."

Borrell expects ad spending on local TV sites to go beyond $1 billion this year. In 2007, total online television revenues grew to $772 million, a 72 percent leap over the previous year.
Like other traditional local media moving online, yellow pages publishers are dealing with falling print revenues. Battling the drop in usage of print directories and related ad revenue declines, they have worked towards righting the ship online by providing interactive ad offerings such as search ad services. According to Borrell, Internet revenues for directories publishers will reach $1.2 billion in 2008, up from $993 million this year.

City-specific resource and community sites some owned by newspaper firms and others independent, have also collected local ad dollars from traditional players. "They're' sucking out online ad dollars from local markets, too," said Conti. "They have a higher rate of return," he added. "They seem to be a lot lighter-weight operations, more unencumbered by traditional [operations]."

The Best Design is the One that Sells

I have always said, “a website is an online sales and marketing tool!” The following excerpt highlights this fact. It is important to get targeted visitors to your site, those that want your products and services. That will create higher conversions rates and more leads for your business and sales for you bottom-line. Demand more from your website. Make sure your website is not costing you money but making you money $$$$. You need to apply online marketing tactics to your website in order for you to succeed.

by Scott Miller, CEO, Vertster
http://www.wilsonweb.com/conversion/miller-design-sell.htm

Bringing testing into the web design process presents some interesting challenges. Traditionally, website designs are selected using the "beauty is best" approach, with the one that your team decides "looks the best" winning out. Unfortunately this system is flawed. In the thousands of conversion projects I have overseen, at least half the time the "most beautiful" page did not turn out to be best for the business.

The saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," should be modified to, "Beauty is in the eye of the customer." A winning design should consider sales, not beauty. The customer's response, not the CEO's preference should prevail. The customers view may be revealed only through testing.The problem is that creativity engenders a strong emotional attachment, kind of like a proud parent has for a new baby. It's no use saying, "Your baby is ugly," since these emotions arise independent of how good or bad the design might be.

When initially confronted with the idea of "testing" as part of the process, website designers often grow uneasy. The best way to circumvent their concerns is to be crystal clear: the goal is to produce multiple designs. Then each will be evaluated on the basis of whether it produces the most sales. This way everyone wins. Designers get to be "extra" creative and the business ends up with an awesome design that doesn't just look great, it sells great, too.

Only Two Weeks Before the 2008 WebAwards Entry Deadline

With only two weeks to go until the entry deadline, we thought we would give you our 10 reasons you should enter the Web Marketing Association's 12th annual WebAward Competition for Website development. If you have already completed your entries, congratulations. If you have not yet entered, stop waiting and get your Websites entered so you can receive the recognition you deserve.

Using data from award winning Websites of the 2007 WebAward competition, the Web Marketing Association has put together these interesting statistics:

• In-House vs. Agencies - 51% of websites which won a WebAward were designed by an in-house team alone while the other half were developed with the input of an agency or agencies. So both agencies and corporate marketing departments have been successful in entering the WebAwards.

• Large vs Small Sites - More than half (51%) of websites which won a WebAward were reportedly created on a budget of less than $50,000. So the WebAwards is not like some other Web site award programs that look to big name winners and celebrities to name as winners.

• Computer Platform - 58% of websites which won a WebAward were designed on a Windows-based PC compared to 42% of award-winning sites which used a Macintosh-based computer. When you look at which computer was used in the programming of the award-winning Websites, PC were used in 81% of the winning entries verses only 19% that used Macs. So sites developed on both systems can and will win.

• Of the participants who provided data, 74.3% of the winning entries last year used Flash to enhance the user experience.

• Almost 70% offered the ability to join a mailing list and only 29% offered RSS feeds. More winning sites are looking to add RSS (27.3%) than any other technology.

• 43% of winning entries used streaming video and 35.5% used streaming audio on their winning site.

• Only 10% of the winning sites currently offer live chat on their site.

• Finally, 21% offer their site in multiple languages. (and the WebAwards can judge sites in 7 languages)

Award winning Web development is what the WebAwards are all about. Winning accolades in the 2008 WebAwards - the Internet's premier award recognition program, is a great way to stand out from others in your industry. It creates a great marketing opportunity for your award winning site and it can't hurt your reputation in the industry to be winning awards! You will also receive valuable feedback from our judges and benchmarks for your industry. But you won't get anything if you don't enter!

To enter, log in to your Nominator account here. Entering is easy and re-entering a site from last year can be done with a single click! Just don't wait - the deadline is May 31st! www.webaward.org

Linking With Integrity

Here is an important article that a friend of mine sent me regarding link building. This is a good tool for online marketing. It is important to make sure you aren't submitting your links to "Link Farms" or "Non-relevant Websites." Search engines know what type of links you are linking to and what types of links are linking to you. So be careful!

By Jerret Turner

It's just as important to know what not to do when executing a website linking strategy as it is to know what to do. With inexpensive linking software and services so readily available, there's a strong temptation to take shortcuts when it comes to getting quality links.

Avoiding these traps will help your search engine placements rise naturally and stay that way for a long time. In this article, I describe two ways that you can help yourself avoid being labeled a link sp@mmer.

Link Farms

What is a link farm? A link farm is any website designed and set up for the sole purpose of getting search engine spiders to crawl and index web pages. These websites provide absolutely no end user utility or benefit.

So how do you recognize a link farm? First, you need to ask yourself, is this site heavy laden with links? Most link farms will have a "farm" of links with little to no content. As for an explanation of the site's existence, it's usually missing too.

The next question you need to ask is, what does the URL of the site itself look like? Most of the time, link farms will have long, hyphenated URLs (i.e. our-great-linking- directory dot com). This is a generalization so not all link farms will have these types of URLs. Many of these link farms are generated using software. The software will go out and find a domain name that contains specific keywords even if it settles on something with several hyphens and numbers. You may still consider a long, hyphenated site for linking purposes but make certain you conduct more research before you submit a link.

Next, look at the domain name extension and note if it's .info or .biz. In order to sell these extensions, many domain name registrars provide a one-time, deep discount. I know of several registrars that sell .info domains for 89 cents per year. These cheap domain names allow sp@mmers to generate thousands of sites at a huge discount.

The next criteria I use to help identify a link farm is what I call the "cheese factor". Although some link farms will look professionally designed, most are either 1) generated with software or 2) are designed with the same cookie-cutter, non-altered templates that fill search engine results. This is especially true with blogs. Sp@mmers and Internet newbies will not take the time to brand their websites or blogs. These are commonly referred to as "pump and dump" websites.

Another question you should ask is, does it look human? That is, does it look like someone hangs around and takes care of things? You should also be able to contact the webmaster either via web form or e-mail. If there's no contact information available anywhere on the website, be very afraid.

If it's a directory site, check out the links in a few of the main directory headings. Are the URLs hyphenated just like the main URL? If you visit one of these sites, does it look the same as the site you just came from? Are there more URLs crammed onto one page than anyone could possibly visit in a lifetime?

Last but not least, if you have your suspicions that a site might be a link farm, for any reason, stay away. It's better to miss a great linking opportunity than to post your link and get downgraded in your search engine placements.

Non-relevant Links

When you're placing your links, you want to make sure that the site you're linking to has something to do with your site and, vice versa.

A non-relevant link is defined as a hypertext link placed on a website, or in a directory, that has little to no relevance to the linking site or directory. These links are placed for the sole purpose of 1) increasing page rank or 2) getting a website crawled and indexed or a combination of the two.

The most obvious way to combat not-relevant links, over which you have complete control, is the placement of links on your site. Avoid placing links on your site to another that has no relevance to your content; even if it's legitimate. Why? The link doesn't do anything for you or the person whose link you placed. On the other hand, don't ask someone to place a link on their site which doesn't relate to yours.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN all look closely at whom you're linking to and who's linking to you. In fact, Google's PageRank definition specifically states that link relevance (quality) is looked at more than just the link itself.

So what's the solution? As in researching a potential link farm, you need to check out the sites that you're linking to. If you're submitting your site to directories or article directories, make sure that you're submitting your content and links to the most relevant topics and sections.

Don't worry about getting an exact match in terms of relevance between your site and the linking site; just make sure that each site complements the other.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Enter Your Website into the 2008 WebAwards

George Dubec, Securenet Systems Sr. VP of Marketing and Sales, will be a judge for the WebAwards for the third straight year. With his experience, background and knowledge, George has become a nationally recognized presenter, speaking at corporate events, trade shows and seminars. He also co-hosts a radio show, “The Internet Business Hour,” which has been on broadcast radio since 1999.

Recognition and feedback is what you will receive when you enter the 2008 WebAward Competition for Website development. Winning accolades in the 2008 WebAwards - the Internet's premier award recognition program, is a great way to stand out from others in your industry. You will also receive valuable feedback from our judges and benchmarks for your industry. But you won't get anything if you don't enter!

With only one month to go until the entry deadline, there are 10 reasons you should enter the Web Marketing Association's 12th annual WebAward Competition for Website development.

10) If you wait until after the May 31st deadline, you'll have to pay a late fee.

9) Your mom would be proud of you.

8) You will receive important benchmark data for your entire industry and where your site ranks in each of the seven judging criteria.

7) Think of the PR opportunities - industry publications, blogs, websites, by-lined articles, podcasts, press releases, interviews - the sky is the limit.

6) A best of industry plaque containing your award winning site will look great in your office.

5) The WebAward logo on your site is like receiving the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" for Web development.

4) Your clients and customers will be impressed at your industry recognition and so will your potential clients.

3) A link to webaward.org will help your site's search engine rankings because you will be linked to an 12-year old .org authoritative site with a high Google PageRank.

2) A Best of Industry award means you're the best and you can prove it!

1) If you don't win, we won't tell anyone - and you still get the feedback.

The 12th Annual WebAward competition deadline for entry is May 31st, only a month away, and you can submit your site for review at www.webaward.org. Avoid a late fee by completing your Web site entries before the deadline.

Enter the 2008 WebAwards today and receive the recognition you deserve! www.webaward.org
WebAwards - The Award in an Award-Winning Web site.

If you don’t have an award winning website, then contact Securenet Systems' team of experts and let them evaluate your site and help you take it to the next level. Call 866-568-9402 or info@securenetsystems.net.