Last year eMarketer was predicting just a slight 5% increase in online ad spend for 2010 after a disappointing decline of 3.3% last year. However, last week eMarketer revised their 2010 ad spend prediction to a whopping 11% increase. This was after Google reported a 21% jump in US ad revenues for Q1 2010. And this trend, according to eMarketer, will continue to at least 2014.

So, are you STILL on the online paid advertising “fence”? Are you wondering what your competitors are doing? We know! But, maybe you are the type that would rather not hear it. As they say, “what you don’t know won’t hurt you”. “Keeping the blinders on” is less painful then having to hear our competition is “blowing us away”! But, you are still reading this, so maybe there is hope..?

When you compare PPC advertising to traditional advertising, it is not difficult to see WHY most ad budgets are shifting to online advertising. With a radio or magazine ad, we cannot target potential consumers based on a specific inquiry about my product or service as we can with PPC. With PPC my ad appears in Google when someone types a search term related to my product. On the other hand, Radio or magazine is shouting out to a mass quantity of relatively generic listeners, hoping to capture a small fraction of interest. AND, most importantly, with PPC we ONLY pay for those who actually VISIT our web sites. NOT even close with magazine, radio or newspaper advertising where you pay and pray.

Also, PPC can be tracked. Using analytics tools you can monitor the success and activity of your online ad campaigns. You can not only monitor your PC ads, but you can edit them “on the fly” and do “split testing” to determine what ad, what headline works best. Again, no way can you do this with traditional advertising.

The trends are changing fast. The latest trend in paid search is social network advertising. Today you can target Facebook users, based on their interests, with PPC ads. The jury is still out to see if Facebook can deliver the same quality and conversion rates as Google Adwords.

Advertising Will Go Mobile on Via Smartphones and Apps. The cell phone companies have struggled to find a way of reaching their mobile audience with ads. Now the iPhone and Android phones have finally opened up this new frontier. Smartphones and apps provide dozens of ways to serve ads to mobile users in ways which provide their customers with real value e.g. location based discount vouchers.

It is no secret ad agencies are struggling to stay alive. Most of the revenues that big ad agencies enjoyed are now going to online advertising. Moreover, many companies are bringing the ad budgets in house, trying to run their own inline advertising campaigns.

The banner ad seems to have come back to life. This is a surprising trend since it is widely known banner ads do more to irritate internet users to motivate them. Also, banner ads cannot be targeted like PPC. And, of course the advertiser pays every time a banner appears, NOT just when it is clicked (like PPC ads).

If you are still wondering how paid online advertising like PPC (pay per click) can benefit your business, take a look at the video we posted to the right. And, if you really want to learn more and even implement online advertising for your web site, check out the Google PPC Course here or in our online marketing store.

Back when I was consulting, it would never cease to amaze me how business owners were so lackadaisical about online marketing. I would attend Chamber of Commerce meetings and continually meet people that had little or zero motivation to hear about what online marketing can do for their business. I heard more excuses of how Google didn’t apply to their business. Meanwhile, I continued building profitable web sites and eventually ended my one-on-one consulting services.

Today, and what you will find on this web site, is an abundance of material to help businesses be empowered with the knowledge to make smart decisions for their business. Even if you as a business owner and want to hire a consultant for your web site marketing, you will be much better off having a basic understanding of for example, search engine marketing or PPC (pay per click) advertising. We hope to provide you with a substantial advantage with articles like this, Free online guides, videos and more in the coming weeks.

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