Marketers increased the amount spent on U.S. search campaigns between October and December 2010 — especially retailers — compared with the year-ago quarter. Spend rose 35.5% overall and 36.6% in retail, according to the SearchIgnite Q4 2010 U.S. Search Market Report released Tuesday.

This is really good news for marketers and agencies in the space, clients are beginning to understand the need for search and marketers are finally able to compete for ad dollars against traditional media. This is thanks, in part, to innovations by the search engine providers on mobile and targeting technologies.

The price of keywords fluctuated depending on the search engine. In Q4 overall, the CPC on Google rose 9%, whereas combined Yahoo and Bing came in flat. Demand for a word or a phrase drives up the price of keywords or terms. Using branded keywords can sometimes help marketers control costs. Brand owners will typically pay the least for their branded terms. One of several reasons this holds true is because consumers are three times more likely to click and convert on the terms, so Google makes its money more easily.

The article attempts to make a strong argument for search spend on Yahoo-Bing as well as Google, however, we will continue to advise our clients against that strategy until a significant amount of their organic traffic is coming from those engines.

Read the whole article here.

AdMob Network hits 2 Billion Requests a Day – Google Mobile Ads Blog.

But, also, just being reported by eMarketer, The Web Passes Newspapers in Ad Spending For First Time – The eMarketer Blog.

Total newspaper ad revenues from print and online ads are expected to hit $25.7 billion this year, still shy of the $25.8 billion advertisers will spend on internet ads.

“Marketers are devoting bigger shares of their budgets to digital media as they see more customers shifting time toward the web,” said Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer. “It’s something we’ve seen coming for a long time, but this is a tipping point.”

Here are some of the big takeaways:

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.
• Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.

and

Ultimately, the goal for brands on Facebook is to be able to engage with their customers or potential customers and to promote a message. Last month, we looked at a study that broke down how users interact with brands on Facebook.

Yes, social media is here, and big brands are adopting it… and yes, they’re using all sorts of methods to gain “friends/followers.”  Check out the article, at AdWeek for the details.

• BP spent $3.6MM in June alone
• AT&T, the #1 advertiser in June spent $8.1MM
• The majority of their “direct-billed” advertisers spend between $10K and $100K per month

I encourage you to take a look at the article, it has some very interesting insights.

Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing. “It’s a watershed moment,” says the study’s lead author, Outsell vice president Chuck Richard.

This is great news for digital agencies, and firms like Google who are the recipients of these online ad spending dollars. Keep in mind, however, that the majority of this revenue goes to the large ad vendor. Agencies keep only from 5-10% of the total spend.

Ad dollars are leaving print… and fast!

Their Q1 losses for 2009 were worse than expected, around a 27% loss in advertising revenue. This outpaced their efforts to cut costs (not surprising, good journalism is expensive).

Seth Godin, on his blog, is predicting that by 2012 there will be, “no significant newspapers printed on newsprint in the US.”

WOW! and entire vertical market will be gone, or almost gone in less than three years!

These are both interesting reads and worth the effort to see what’s coming for online advertising.

We have seen with with our clients, and in our past, efforts to cut “traditional” media spending and emphasize online strategies. We’re helping our client get better results through email and PPC marketing; things that are measurable and quickly executable.