Full coverage of the data in the report can be found at www.SearchEngineWatch.com or on Efficient Frontier’s Blog here.

From an online marketer’s perspective, here are factors that can cause cost-per-click data to fluctuate:

• More advertisers entering the market
• More aggressive bidding to maintain positioning
• Better quality search ads and quality score as determined by the search engine

What do these micro-changes in price reveal to Marketers about current business trends?
In this report, Mortgage advertisers experienced a 12% increase in average cost-per-click which can be interpreted in several different ways:

• Are more mortgage advertisers shifting dollars from other offline tactics like print, TV and Outdoor?
• Is the increase the result of projected increases in real estate activity during summer months?
• Have mortgage leads become more valuable due to lower demand? (Thus causing higher cost-per-click tolerance)

The news puts an end to lingering talks involving Microsoft and their intentions to acquire Yahoo…read the Microsoft press release here.

In case you missed it, back in April, Yahoo confirmed that it was running a limited test of Google Inc.’s AdSense for Search service, which delivered relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo!’s own search results. Apparently, the test was successful!

Yahoo’s press release points out revenue projections from the deal, which they expect to generate $250m to $450m during the first 12 months.

Google’s press release makes an interesting point that both companies will work on integrating their instant messaging clients.

For marketers, many expect better performance from Yahoo campaigns resulting in more visitors and higher conversions.

Of course, now the real test begins…stay tuned.

According to the guide, total online retail revenue hit $166 billion in the US in 2007, with the top 500 Internet retailers accounted for 61% of total online retail revenue.

By the way, total retail growth was only 3.8% last year while online Retail reached 21.8% growth.

So, who were America’s top retailers on the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guidein 2007?

1. Amazon: $14.8B
2. Staples: $5.6B
3. Office Depot: $4.9B
4. Dell: $4.2B
5. HP Home & Office Store: $3.4B

Fastest growing categories in 2007 online:

1. Jewelry: 36%
2. Books/other media: 32%
3. Mass merchants/dept. stores: 31%
4. Apparel: 24%

Slowest growing categories:

1. Health and beauty:11%
2. Flowers/gifts: 11%
3. Food/drugs: 12%
4. Hardware/home improvement: 13%.

In a survey of retailers complementing the guide, Omniture Inc. was the most named ecommerce technology provider across multiple categories in the vendor listings of the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. Omniture also topped the vendor list with 218 mentions, followed by GSI Commerce Inc., Commission Junction Inc., Google and Coremetrics.

Now, all marketers are not Amazon. But understanding the best practices and how the 500 Top Internet Retailers achieved their leadership positions can provide valuable lessons in how to succeed in the fast growing online marketing channel.

The ten “googley principles are here and listed below:

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

Does your company’s search design convey these principles?
Would adopting or at least considering ways to incorporate these search engine friendly design principles improve the user experience of your customer or prospects?

Yes.

For additional insight into the “Googley” philosophy, you can check out Ten things Google has found to be true.

Our discussion outlined best practices in social networking and marketing options available to businesses in as well as an analysis of the potential legal risks facing companies in this space. As expected, the interesting pairing of marketing innovation and legal perspective…drew a diverse crowd of bankers (event held in uptown Charlotte, NC), entrepreneurs and even a few innovative small business owners. Our panel discussed and shared a collection of definitions, case studies, and a few humorous examples of social networking gone bad (Second Life banking crisis). Overall, the event seemed to satisfy the expectations and curiosity of the audience…there were plenty of “head nods” and notes-taken on social networking. Following the event, I eagerly awaited the anticipated growth of my social network from the 120 attendees…through LinkedIn and Facebook requests…which was the final call-to-action from our panel discussion. While, I’m still waiting for the wave of “Friend” requests, I have received a steady stream of feedback (mostly positive) and more importantly, a common theme continues to arise:

How can I explain social networking in 2 minutes or less?

While this question indicates that our panel may have missed the mark of defining social networking in ‘Plain English’… I’ll take the feedback as an opportunity for improvement. In reality, explaining online marketing concepts can be a challenge for busy executives and marketers who need to create vision within their organizations in an ever-changing industry. So, in posing the question to my social network, I stumbled upon an interesting group called Common Craft, which takes visual explanation of difficult marketing concepts to a whole new level… Check out the video below, entitled “Social Networking in Plain English.” By the way, The full video of our panel discussion will be available at WCSR.com/WombleTech soon. Enjoy!

Most CEO’s and CFO’s are focused on driving efficiency and scale to achieve revenue growth. But when it comes to marketing, they need to be able to make a connection between the work ($) that is being done and the revenue that will be produce as a result.

Bottom line.

With studies suggesting that merely 2/3 of all marketers include metrics in their marketing plans…a need for more standard measurement is necessary for measuring results online. So, what do you track? The ultimate answer is Everything…but realistically, try focusing on things that will move the needle and provide leading indicators of revenue. (Stuff that C-Levels discuss).

Here are 10 tactical examples that you might not be considering when establishing metrics for measuring results online:

1. Brand impact (i.e., increased brand awareness, intent or favorability)
2. Number of impressions
3. Position of paid listing
4. Number of clicks
5. Ratio of new to returning visitors
6. Amount of increased website traffic
7. Duration of website visits
8. Amount of increased traffic to physical store
9. Amount of increased volume to call center
10. Number of leads generated for products sold online
11. Number of leads generated for products sold offline
12. Number of immediate sales generated for products sold online

Collecting this data will create trends and insight that will translate across most organizations.

As reported in a recent survey by Lenskold Group, a vast majority of companies measuring financial returns indicate that profits can increase if measurements are put in place to capture marketing’s contribution to sales.

Although the gap in funding of analytics and measurements continues to close, few have achieved leadership in this emerging discipline, but the trend is clearly on the upswing:

Other findings from the Lenskold study that I found interesting:

* Marketers have improved their ability to measure marketing ROI, including an increase in those able to link brand measures to incremental sales and profits.

* The early adopters achieving success in their measurements of financial returns are still in the minority (16%), but there is a solid base of the early majority (42%) who consider their ability to be somewhat short of where it could be.

* Marketers with the discipline to measure financial returns are using measurement methodologies (pre-post analysis, market testing, marketing mix modeling, and quantitative research) at much higher rates than those not measuring financial returns.

* The profit potential that can come from improved marketing measurements continues to be significant and is critical for strengthening marketing’s role in retaining and growing marketing ROI.

* Along with the increased use of financial metrics, non-marketing executives have increased confidence that marketing investments are profitable. Marketing credibility clearly grows with increased accountability.

At WebsiteBiz, we constantly reinforce the value of measurement and analytics in all of our campaigns.  We understand that marketing ROI is important.

Check Us Out!

Yes, we actually had to convince corporate management that search engine marketing was a “real” and viable channel for lead generation and customer acquisition.

To me, the idea of questioning the value of search engine marketing is a bit unbelievable. With search engine marketing spending and Google’s stock on the rise…the market is exploding!

But, if you need some help convincing your management…there are hundreds of articles and several good tips on how to justify a search marketing budget.

Of course, I appreciate that any new marketing endeavor will require a proposal and budget approval. I also see the potential and results of our clients who test new channels and are able track ROI and consistently exceed their marketing goals through search engine marketing.

And believe me…the bottom-line results are hard for sophisticated marketers to ignore.

“Basically, when a customer clicks on a Google ad, Google could handle any payments they make at the advertiser’s site. Google takes a cut of the purchase instead of money for the first click-through. Bang, no more click fraud.”

We’ll see if this rumor holds up better than the Google PC!

Here is an early look at one of the Google print ads that ran in the Chicago Sun Times

Most experts agree that it has unlimited potential because it works to make advertising even more relevant by dynamically matching an interest or offer to a reader.

But as this ClickZ article notes, there is still room for development when it comes to execution and measurable results.

Could 2006 be the year behavioral targeting finds a place in your online marketing strategy?