It was a busy week in digital – with new numbers on mobile adoption among ad execs, a report from SearchIgnite that shows a 14% increase in paid search spend year-over-year, Twitter’s first @earlybird deal (with partner Disney) and the meteoric rise of Old Spice Man. Get caught up on all these stories and more in our roundup below.

Study: Mobile is Fastest Growing Media Among Ad Execs

Above: Kraft Foods’ new iPad app

According to a new report from Advertiser Perception Inc. (API), 46 percent of ad execs on both the marketer and agency side are leveraging mobile as part of their advertising plans – a number expected to jump to 60 percent within the next year. API projects mobile to grow at a faster rate than any other medium.

At present, the most common ad formats on mobile are banner ads (62 percent of advertisers surveyed), and text ads (60 percent) – though video is the fastest growing and is expected to grow from 28 percent to 43 percent within the next 12 months. As for mobile search, 41 percent of respondents are currently utilizing the channel, and API projects this number will increase to 50 percent in a year.

When it comes to mobile media platforms advertisers overwhelmingly favor smartphones (87 percent of respondents), though the iPad will rise the fastest. About 22 percent of respondents currently utilize Apple’s new tablet in their advertising plans, but API predicts this number will grow to 49 percent in the coming months.

To learn more about emerging opportunities in mobile, be sure to follow our summer POV series that focuses exclusively on mobile marketing. You can read our first five reports below:

• Mobile Marketing Overview
• Mobile Search
• SMS (Text Messaging)
• Mobile Social Marketing
• Mobile Applications

Read the full article »

Search has become the starting point for both consumers and marketers finding their way around the web, and it’s undergoing a rebirth as mobile devices proliferate. Marketers now have more opportunities to meet consumers’ needs exactly when and where their search is conducted. In the second POV of our summer-long mobile series, we take a closer look at the burgeoning opportunities in mobile search.

360i POV: Mobile Search

>>Download 360i’s report on Mobile Search (PDF).

Key Takeaways

• Mobile search is on the rise. Search engine marketing and optimization continue to matter across mobile devices, and Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are jockeying to serve as the default engines across mobile handsets. Key players are making big moves in the space – signaling even bigger moves on the horizon.
• Search is evolving with mobile devices in a variety of a ways – for example, queries are typically shorter (no matter how much better mobile keypads get) and more local. Further, Google Android devices feature a built-in search button, and the results pages themselves continue to evolve to showcase more mobile-specific content.
• Our POV also lists several mobile search best practices, such as grouping mobile campaigns separately, broadening your scope to encompass more high volume keywords and geo-targeting your campaigns.

For marketers looking to reach consumers wherever they are, mobile search is a great starting point. To get the most out of it, marketers should plan holistically, tying mobile search into their broader search marketing programs.

Read the blog and follow us on Twitter all summer to learn how you can make the most of the increasingly mobile-centric marketing future.

People have long been turning to the web to find information — and as social and mobile continue to gain momentum, this trend will only increase. More and more of today’s searchers want late-breaking information that answers their queries with the greatest relevancy. In other words, they want the engines to tell them what’s going on right now for a given topic.

Search engines have responded to this demand by incorporating real-time search results into their offerings. One engine leading the way is OneRiot, a real-time search engine that provides results influenced by what people are sharing on Twitter, Myspace, Digg, Facebook and more. We interviewed Tobias Peggs, President of OneRiot, to learn more about the engine and the future of real-time search.

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[360i]: Since OneRiot launched, the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) have incorporated more real-time search functionality. How will OneRiot compete against them and stand out?

[Tobias Peggs]: Across all search engines, studies have shown that 40% of users’ queries are best served by realtime search results. These satisfy users searching for things as heavyweight as “Oil Spill” or as entertaining as “Lindsay Lohan.” Those users are expecting their search engine to tell them what’s going on right now for that topic. That’s exactly what OneRiot provides. We find the news, stories and videos that are really resonating with people right now for any topic. In addition we offer a partner API that enables 3rd party search engines to show our results to their users. We also operate the RiotWise network specifically for monetizing realtime search results – both on our own site and our partners’ properties.

Read the full article »

Headlines from this week included promising news about the online ad industry, the launch of Twitter’s Business Center and a new mobile strategy from Starbucks that utilizes location-based social network Brightkite. We recap these stories and more below.

Report: Online Ad Market Rebounds in First Quarter of 2010

New comScore data signaled a display advertising rebound in early 2010, with U.S. Internet users receiving a record-high 1.1 trillion display ads during Q1. This figure reflects a 15-percent jump year-over-year. ComScore estimates that total display ad spend reached $2.7 billion in Q1 at an average CPM of $2.48.

In a press release, comScore Senior Vice President Jeff Hacket said he sees a strong resurgence in the online display ad market. “The first quarter of 2010 posted strong volume in online display ads, coinciding with increasing expenditure from advertisers and higher CPMs for publishers,” he said. “This pickup in activity should bode well for the online advertising industry as we move forward in 2010.”

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Image via Businessweek.com

A quick glance at John Battelle’s resume is evidence enough that the founder & chairman of Federated Media Publishing is somewhat of a modern-day renaissance man. In addition to leading FM – the publishing company behind many of the most prominent blogs, sites, social networks and brands – he’s also a respected businessman, journalist, author, professor, blogger and conference programmer.

John’s diverse repertoire of expertise allows him to provide valuable insights about emerging trends in the digital space. He regularly addresses a number of hot-button topics on his blog, Searchblog, which covers the fusion of search, technology and media.

At 360i, we’re interested in those same topics as they pertain to the work we do on behalf of our clients in all areas of digital marketing and advertising – and we are always looking for ways to share thought leadership and continue the conversations that will ultimately propel our industry forward in new and exciting directions. I spoke with John about a few of the most “now” trends in digital, as well some things to look out for in 2010. The interview follows below:

[David Berkowitz]: Social search has been a hot topic for years, but now Google is experimenting with integrating results from one’s social graph into search results. Do you expect this kind of social search to now go mainstream?

[John Battelle]: Absolutely. “Social” is now mainstream, and search cannot but reflect the habits and usage patterns of the mainstream. Recent announcements of the integration of Twitter and Facebook into Bing and Google are harbingers of this. The real question is whether we’ll even need search “portals” anymore as our habits shift to a more mobile, social and less destination-driven interface for search.

Read the full interview »

With the latest Google search announcement of its BETA Caffeine engine, what can marketers expect if Google flips a switch or starts a transition to a newer “next-generation” infrastructure?

Now that Google’s sandbox beta engine has stabilized – it was previously too volatile to run comprehensive and accurate testing – we’ve evaluated rankings for a sample set of 40 retail keywords. We looked at ten major retail brand names (keywords), ten retail head terms (single keywords), ten retail torso terms (two-word phrases) and ten retail long-tail phrases (four-word phrases) and compared the search results on the first three pages of both engines (standard Google and “Caffeinated” Google).

40 Retail Keywords Used in the Analysis

Six things stood out to us as notable differences that could impact marketers when Google makes the switch.

Read the full article »

Facebook has done so well blowing out its core social features – the News Feed, Mini Feed, brand Pages, virtual gifts, applications, and Facebook Connect, to name a few – that it’s amazing how frustrating it is to use some of the basic functionality like search and email. Part of that’s finally about to change, now that Facebook is rolling out trials of an upgraded on-site search engine.

Here’s a snippet of the preview from Facebook’s blog:

With the test, you will be able to search your News Feed for the most recent status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. You will also be able to search for status updates, posted links and notes in Search from people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to everyone.

This is a start. As Read/Write Web notes, this inches closer to the real-time search features that make Twitter so useful, but Facebook’s focus seems to be helping users search their friends’ content, rather than content across all of Facebook. It’s also unclear right now if they’re fixing other fundamental problems – for instance, when you search for groups or Pages, you can’t sort them in any way, such as by the number of members or fans. [Update: TechCrunch reports Facebook will soon make it possible to search content from everyone, and will update privacy options accordingly.]

Read the full article »