Say hello to Web Analytics 2.0

Its true, its been over a week since I was last excited by a web post. Unplugging from the Matrix has been great and so has
the bright sunshine in London. Anyhow, Web Analytics is becoming increasingly important on tracking how your site, blog, or online marketing campaign is going.

Our friends over at Google, offer some free cool analytics though a little limited. So imagine, my surprise when I came across http://getclicky.com

Clicky is available for FREE to all users with sites that average less than 1,000 page views per day. They also have a premium service that is required for sites with higher traffic levels, but, they also give you access to a few cool features such as RSS and Spy. When you first register, you get a free two week trial of premium, after which you are downgraded to the free plan if you have not paid the price of just $14.99/year. You can upgrade to premium at any time, before or after your trial ends. Simply go to this page to sign up.

Very Nice..

Online ad spending had a healthy growth in 2006

Online ad spending in the U.S. grew 34 percent in 2006, compared with 2005, as marketers continued expanding their use of the Internet to promote their products and services, according to a new study. With an estimated $16.8 billion spent, the U.S. is a “healthy environment” for online advertising, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said Wednesday.

Convinced that Internet advertising’s effectiveness continues to improve, U.S. companies are steadily increasing their online marketing budgets, the organizations said. Ad spending grew an estimated 32 percent in the fourth quarter to $4.8 billion, the highest quarterly total ever. With another year of solid growth, the U.S. online advertising market distances itself more from the difficult years that followed the dot-com bust, when spending money for online marketing was somewhat discredited.

After peaking at $8.2 billion in 2000, U.S. online ad spending fell in 2001 and 2002 but began regaining lost ground in 2003 as the once-disgraced Internet industry showed its first signs of recovery and the start of the Web 2.0 era.
In 2004, with the emergence of Google as a search engine and advertising powerhouse, online marketing increased its momentum. That year, the market finally broke the 2000 record, ending with $9.6 billion in online ad spending, and Google’s IPO became further proof of the Internet industry’s rebound.

By growing every year since 2003, online ad spending has played a major part in fueling a new wave of technical innovation and venture capital investment in the Internet market. A particularly vibrant segment has been search engine pay-per-click ads, the format that generates most of Google’s rising revenue. IAB and PwC reached their estimates from data they collected from the top 15 online ad sellers in the U.S. The organizations will report actual results for the third and fourth quarters of 2006 next month.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070307/tc_infoworld/86628

Online Ad Spending to Total $19.5 Billion in 2007
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004635

Search Engine Marketing Blogs

Wow! The sheer number of marketing blogs on this topic is staggering. Marketeers are milking the hell out of this. Below is a link that will link you to over 380 blogs covering search engine marketing with a few that venture into blogging, social media and new media public relations. Search engines HAVE truly been hijacked by marketeers.

http://www.toprankblog.com/search-marketing-blogs/

http://www.toprankblog.com/2007/03/search-marketing-blogs-update-030207/