For many publishers, display has simply not paid off. Search advertising revenues, however, have steadily increased during this same time. And, with roughly 90% of the major publishers’ revenue being derived from low-paying (and in many cases remnant) advertising networks, many would argue that it is just a matter of time before many of these sites begin charging users to access content; either on a subscription, or pay-as-you-go basis. The alternative, of course, requires an alternative approach to advertising — the fact of the matter is that publishers are not in the business of providing free content if they are unable to monetize their traffic.

(click image to enlarge)

But, where is the boost coming from? Thebigmoney.com says the recent, rapid growth is due to, “…a strong advertising push from social gaming companies, along with direct marketers and local businesses.” While there have always been a number of theories regarding the site’s (in)ability to monetize, its registered 400 million users presents an unparralled opportunity. And, if Facebook can figure out a way to successfully grow its revenue, this could pave the way for monetizing other social sites and apps. At the end of the day, Facebook’s revenue will overwhelmingly come from advertising. But how the story will continue to play out remains to be seen.

Via TMCnet

(click image to enlarge)

(click image to enlarge)

The data used for this piece, can be found here.

As usual, there were some surprises among the popular retail categories in 2009. Luxury and highly-personalized items like jewelry and watches saw an increase. Consumer electronics, computer software, event tickets, and books also shot up. Non-personalized items like computers, music, movies and sports equipment were also slightly up.

But not all retail sectors received a boost in 2009. Home and garden items, furniture and appliances, apparel and accessories, and greetings and miscellaneous gifts took a marginal slide. Other surprises on the downside included video games, consoles and accessories. Online toys and hobbies sales dropped in 2009 as well, despite a relatively strong fourth quarter. The decline in sales is most likely due to the price slashing at large retailers like Wal-Mart.

In the same article comScore.com released some key e-commerce trends to look for in 2010. They include the following:

• Sixty-one percent of consumers identified current economic conditions as poor in January 2010, compared to 77% in January 2009.
• Despite this improvement, 25% of consumers believe the economy has not hit bottom yet, and another 23% think it may drop again before fully recovering. Only 9% of consumers think a recovery will continue with no significant problems.
• Thirty-six million people visited a digital coupon site in December 2009, representing 20% annual growth in total visits and 8% annual growth in unique visitors.
• Supermarket retailers tend to attract few visitors to their e-commerce sites.

Between November 1 and December 31, 2009 shoppers spent $29.1 billion in online sales. Retailer Daily reported that these figures indicated an increase of 4% from $27.9 billion spent in the same period a year earlier. In contrast, the 2008 holiday season saw a decline of 3%.

The presence of online, or digital, coupons has also grown exponentially in 2009. Data presented by Coupons.com reveals that consumer savings from digital coupons increased 170% in 2009, while regular coupon savings grew just 16%. ComScore’s Q4 2009 retail e-commerce sales data was gathered from a global panel of 2 million internet users and included all worldwide buying on U.S. e-commerce websites.

via comScore.com

“Our goal is to make it easy for people to be smarter shoppers by distilling relevant information about every product and every store into a single search,” said Dave Cook, the senior market director at theFind.com. “VeriSign’s well recognized seal has given merchants — particularly smaller stores — a substantial and measurable lift in the traffic theFind.com sends them.”

The study surveyed traffic to 65,535 online stores between January 21 and 27, 2010. The Find.com sends traffic to 150,000 stores each month. The stores examined as part of this study, are a sampling of the most popular stores across a wide range of popular e-commerce categories. The VeriSign seal is viewed over 150 million times every day on more than 90,000 sites across the globe.

Regarding the study, Tim Callan, VP of product marketing at VeriSign, said that, “consumers need to trust the merchants they buy from, and TheFind is making it easy for shoppers to quickly and confidently recognize those retailers who protect their online transactions with VeriSign SSL.” Callan continued, “…theFind’s research shows that the VeriSign seal delivers a true advantage for all merchants, but the benefits are greatest for smaller stores that are always in search of ways to elevate their brand to compete with eCommerce leaders.”

Via MarketWire @  Money.cnn.com

According to Findley, the following are four tips for optimizing creative, within the e-commerce space:

1. Quantifying benefits.

2. Take advantage of multiple executions when communicating complex or higher order messages.

3. Don’t forget the emotional content!

4. Make the brand prominent.

(Image: Seven insights from holistic campaign testing; Frank Findley, Quirk’s Marketing Review April 2008)

via Frank Findley at comScore

Conversely,  U.S. magazines have lost a substantial number of ad purchasers. The industry saw the largest revenue decline in at least 10 years as it fell 18.1% in 2009, and further 12.4% in Q4 2009. While these trends may seem altogether intuitive, the degree to which display has grown, and print has shrunk is remarkable.

Via Marketingvox.com

via Dan Frommer @ BusinessInsider

It is also noteworthy that gains were earned by all four companies — not just Google. This represents a strong indication that display advertising, not only search advertising, is stabilizing. Search advertising, however, is still producing the largest gains. Of the four companies, Microsoft saw the largest percentage of growth at 18.6 as their revenue is starting to count for something. But the other three companies were close behind, growing at least 11.5 percent.

The author, Erick Schonfeld, keeps tabs on these four companies each quarter as he sees their combined figures representing the state of the global ad market. The numbers include global advertising revenues and network revenues paid to affiliates through networks such as AdSense and Yahoo!. (Note: the numbers also include only the advertising portions of online revenues for Microsoft and AOL.

Here are the numbers:

via Erick Schonfeld @ Tech Crunch