Online Ad Spending in the New Year

As the economic outlook gets grimmer and grimmer, advertisers are turning more and more to Internet Marketing.



Key points to note in the article eMarketer's Predictions for 2009:
- Online video ad spending will rise to 45% in 2009, reaching $850 million!
- Search marketing will grow 14.9% in 2009, totalling $12.3 billion.
- Online retail sales - excluding travel - will grow by only 4% in 2009
- Total US Internet ad spending will increase to $25.7 billion in 2009, an 8.9% growth rate.

For a more detailed overview of the various online markets - I HIGHLY recommend you read this article. It shows you exactly where online marketing dollars will be going this new year... and most importantly, why.

InsideTheGrove.com Goes Live!

Round 2 of the sports sites in our office commenced with the launch of InsideTheGrove.com last evening.

An ESPN Affiliate sports fan website for The University of Mississippi, the site is run by former contributors to OleMissSports.com - Chase Parham and Ty Allushuski. It includes forums, blogs, video and tons of articles covering the best in U of M sports.

NittanyNetwork.com: THE Penn State Sports Fan Site

The first of several college sports sites under development in our office launched yesterday.

NittanyNetwork.com is a an official ESPN affiliate site covering Penn State sports.

The site provides fans an interactive experience with six open forums and four blogs. It also contains the latest news and information on your favorite Penn State sports teams, most importantly their legendary football team.

ScoutingOhio.com Unveiled

After much anticipation, ScoutingOhio.com has launched!

The website is a great example of Web 2.0 in practice. Originally launched in Fall 2005, ScoutingOhio.com is a high school football scouting website. With over 2,000 videos and 45,000 unique visitors a month... it's a must-visit for college recruiters seeking out the top athletes in the state. The brainchild of Mark Porter, the goal is to connect the athletes and recruiters with the hopes of getting students college football scholarships.

This weekend marked the official launch of Scouting Ohio 2.0. The redesigned site has a plethora of new features designed to enhance the user experience including a video upload feature, player profile creation, top 100 player list and much more!

Franchise Sales May Be on the Rise

As a national franchisee of the world's leading Internet marketing, Web development and Web design company - WSI - I found the following article especially interesting.

A Bad Economy May Benefit Franchises

The three factors highlighted in this article, combined with the fact that more and more companies are shifting their traditional marketing dollars to the Internet, makes WSI quite an attractive franchise opportunity right now. If you want to learn more about WSI, feel free to contact our office at 330.702.8088 or email us at Info@WSICompetitiveEdge.com. We're always speaking with potential franchisees about our experiences with WSI - there is a lot of value in hearing straight from the horse's mouth. ;)

Social Media Intro

I know I'm going to post on something social media related sooner or later... so best to start here.

The Sports Fan Mentality

With our office hard at work on four football websites right now... I found this article particularly interesting.

“Sports fans are willing to pay for premium content and merchandise and are accustomed to the presence of sponsors and advertisers around sports events.” - Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer.

I never thought about it that way... but I guess it makes perfect sense. When was the last time you went to a stadium that was actually named after the team? If you went to see the Brown's play... you don't count.

Pandora.com

This is an incredible site! Create your own online internet radio stations featuring only your favorite jams... genius.

Why the blog?

As an Internet Consultant, it's part of my job to understand new Internet technologies... but more importantly, learn how to leverage them for professional business use. There are so many things you can do on the Internet today, it's challenging for small and medium sized businesses to sort through and prioritize what will be most effective for their overall business goals. So, I bring you this blog... and before I take off running... I thought it was important to at least begin by explaining what a blog is and why it's essential.

Start by checking out this gem from CommonCraft – it does a great job of explaining what a blog is for the average human.


Now that you know what a blog is, you still need to answer the question “Why is it important to my business?” Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere should help you answer that.

Don't want to read it? Ok, I'll sum up the things that are most relevant...

The audience is there.

• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
• Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
• Total internet audience 188.9 million
  

There's money to be made.

• The majority of bloggers we [Technorati] surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

Effectively managing your online brand is KEY in the era of Social Media.

• Whether or not a brand has launched a social media strategy, more likely than not, it’s already present in the Blogosphere. Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate).