February 1st, 2012
Search Ad Budgets Expected To Increase in 2012
It seems search marketing is still growing amidst the increasing trend of social advertising. A study from eMarketer announced that search ad budgets will increase by 27% in 2012. The study also shows that search ad budgets will hit $30 billion by 2016. Google remains to on top of the heap overwhelming Bing and Yahoo. As the US elections and Summer Olympic Games happens this year, search ad spending will maintain a strong yet steady growth this year.
Image via eMarketer
Google still remains the king of search advertising. It’s expected that Google’s revenues will be the one to increase quickly in 2012 among the top three search sites. While Microsoft’s growth rate is expected to transcend Google through 2014, Google still holds nearly 10 times Bing’s search ad revenue with $20.28 billion against Bing’s $2.21 billion.
The overwhelming trend of Facebook ads and other forms of social media advertising has not affected Google’s hold on the search ad market and will remain firm in the US. Google is expected to improve its engine by the recent social integration with YouTube and Google+. eMarketer predicts that Google will cover 77.9% of all US search ad revenues, and in 2014 will be 79.8% as Yahoo and AOL drop some shares. eMarketer’s study is based from meta-analysis of data from online advertising trends, company reports, and research agencies.
January 3rd, 2012
Why Mobile Websites Can Increase Lead Generation
The use smartphones and mobile devices continues to increase. According to comScore’s mobile subscriber market share report in Q4 of 2011, Android gained 3.1 share points and Android handsets now represent 47% of the US smartphone market. iPhone also gained some points thanks to the recent launch of iPhone 4S. iPhone covers 30% of the smartphone market. comScore also noted that almost 40% of the US mobile population carry smartphones and that means nearly 100 million people.
Enough with the figures, it’s more than obvious that people are accessing the Internet using smartphones and tablet pc’s. Ever noticed your Facebook feed? Your friends and contacts are uploading photos, updating their status, and checking-in at a restaurant using a mobile app. In the ’90′s, you’re definitely itching to establish your website on the Web because of the dot-com bubble. Today, we live in the age of “instant” where we all want content and information in a push of a button. And that button is located on your smartphone, your friends’ smartphone, and your potential customers’ smartphone.
So as a business owner, what do you need to do? Start creating a mobile website that looks presentable on any mobile device. It’s a bit difficult but the efforts won’t go in vain. You want to increase ROI and acquire leads? You have to put your website not only on people’s monitors but should appear on their smartphones as well. It’s not a fad, Gartner’s study showed that 2011 saw consumers using their smartphones and mobile devices to access the Internet more than PCs. It’s advisable to check out Google’s GoMo so you can acquaint yourself about mobile websites.
The next thing you need to think of is how you can optimize your mobile website. I know some of you are scratching their heads, how different is traditional SEO from mobile SEO? I’ll write that in a separate post so you’ll be more enlightened. But for now, I think you should be thinking how to make your mobile website appear slick before it can be opitmized. Besides, there’s no use in increasing your mobile traffic if your site looks good in an Android phone but looks off in an iPhone.
Check out the video below for an intro to mobile websites by Google.
