I came across an article called “Cutting Costs With Online Coupon Sites” posted on May 6, 2008 today and although it made sense but I never thought about it this way. Basically the article was about the number of page views on websites that had coupons or deals increased about 38% from March ’07 to May ’08 as the economy is slowing down. I believe since we are in a slower market now this percentage has increased from May.

Here is a direct quote from the article: “User engagement by deal-seekers appears to be ramping up,” says comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman. “As a general rule, something like online coupon site activity would increase as a result of macroeconomic trends.”

After reading the quotes from the article I try to link this all back to marketing. As consumers are engaging in deals and very often as a marketer/advertisers you are always promoting your deals to consumers, so why not market your deals specifically on these sites? In addition, the Holiday Season is fast approaching so there will be another boom of traffic through these sites to find great deals for gifts to love ones so why not engage in the opportunity in increasing your conversions today?

For marketers, if you are interested in engaging in the opportunity you can review the following sites from our marketplace:

• InetSeekers
• Black Friday
• TheBuynSell
• Premiere Shopper
• Classified Guru
• GoLSN
• TicketOnline

As we’re heading closer to the end of ‘08 and with the economic turmoil, many predictions from all over the online advertising industry are making their predictions. Here are some I found from the web, do you agree with them? What is your predictions for ‘09?

Clark Kokich | Razorfish

“There is definitely a softness in the market that we haven’t seen in years…Online ad spends are now a significant part of the media mix, and they’re not going to be immune from scrutiny…. If consumer spending continues to decline, clients will have to rein in their spending.”

Tom Bedecarre | AKQA Inc.

“What we would anticipate is a slowing but still net positive growth…The very large advertisers still have a very small position (of the budgets) in online, and as they spend more that will continue to balance off the overall ad spend decline.”

Robert J. Coen |Senior vice president and forecasting director at Magna in New York| Source: New York Times

“Mr. Coen’s first look at 2009 was also somewhat optimistic because he is forecasting a larger gain in ad spending, 3.1 percent….I don’t think 2009 will be a great year,” Mr. Coen said, “but the comparisons will be easier” because of the sluggishness this year.”

eMarketers:

“Advertisers will spend about $25 billion online this year in the U.S., eMarketer projects, which is a growth rate of 17.4 percent over last year. In 2009, growth will drop somewhat, but will yield an impressive 14.5 percent for total ad spending of $28.5 billion. By 2011, an anticipated boom in online video advertising, combined with a recovered economy, will mean spending growth greater than 20 percent for the first time since 2007. Marketers are expected to devote more than $40 billion to online advertising that year.”

Borrell Associates:

“Next year will be the first in many in which some components of interactive advertising show little or no growth, or may even decline. The changes foreseen are not cyclical, and show no sign of improving quickly, irrespective of upward movement in the nation’s economy. For local interactive media, the big slowdown has begun a year earlier than we anticipated. The spending levels by local advertisers – which have grown at a frenetic 47% this year – are expected to slow down to a relatively paltry 8% in 2009. Local media companies projecting double-digit and even triple-digit increases in their interactive budgets next year will have a very difficult time meeting those expectations – especially if they rely on banner ads. Traditional forms of interactive advertising such as banner ads are quickly falling out of favor and site publishers should begin looking at expanding their ad arsenal with other offerings.”

We also added a poll which will end Friday November 28th, 2008 to our side menu in which you can tell us has your company made any changes to it’s online spending so far.

As the economy is heading for a recession, companies that are advertising might experience a slash in their advertising budget and spending it more effectively.  Therefore as a publisher you might also be affected with a fluctuating revenue figure from their site.

In order to let visitors from your site know that they can advertise specifically on your site at a fixed cost, we highly encourage all publishers to utilize our “Buy Now Referral Link”. This link bar will be placed on top of your website, which doesn’t take much room and the words on the link bar are customizable so you can write and promote anything you like. This is an effective link bar that will capture the attention of your audiences and when they click on it, they will land on your detailed advertising page listing all the advertising opportunities that they can have with you. It will also allow potential advertisers to bookmark the page and reference it at a later time or share it with their friends connected on social networking sites and bookmarking sites.

To place your “Buy Now Referral Link” today, locate the website registration email that you got when you registered your site with us. The subject of the email is “AdOnion.com: Website http://www.yourwebsite.com Created!” and follow the link to customizing your link bar. After implementing the link bar it should look like this (marked in red) on your website

We’re on in this together and through a period like this it’s all about patience and understanding as many companies are struggling to keep cost as low as possible.

Feel free to tell us whether your company has slash their online advertising dollars through our poll located in the top right hand corner.

I came across this article written by Mike Sachoff called UK Consumers Spends More Online Than U.S. Shoppers and found that it is very interesting. I think in a time of the economy downturn it is important to keep advertisers informed about online spending habits so adjustments can be made to their advertising campaign to get more return.

Form the article it suggests that 45% of online buyers are looking for promotions and highly influences and continue their purchase from the online seller. In addition one third of the online buyers will be influence by loyalty programs and cash backs when purchasing online.

Here are some key findings from the study conducted by JupiterResearch:

• The average UK consumer will spend 40% more online than the average U.S. consumer
• UK consumers will make 24 % more purchases online
• UK consumers are more likely compared to the U.S. to use the Internet as a resource in their decision making process throughtout the purchase of goods and services of all types.
• The average UK consumer is eight times more likely to conduct research on multiple sites before making an online purchase.
• UK consumers are 13 percent more likely to be a frequent online buyer than those in the U.S.

Is your marketing campaign targeted to the US, have you found that the US market is slowing down? Are you also targeting your campaign to the UK? If so have your sales increased in the UK? After reviewing the study would you alter your marketing campaign to the UK?

As our marketplace is continue to grow, we know that it is hard to keep track of all the sites that you may wish to purchase besides making the purchase on the spot and continue browsing after one transaction is completed. In order to overcome this we’ve added a ‘Save Favorite’ button to help advertisers in the selection of the site. This will allow advertisers to mark all the site they are interested and once they are finish browsing through the marketplace they can go back to all the sites again and review and make their purchases.

Here is how the new process works:

You can make searches in our marketplace and when you encounter a site you like mark it by selecting the time frame and click the check box in the favorite column. After every page, located on top or at the bottom of the page there is a ‘Save Favorite’ button that you can save your favorite.

Once you are ready with the selection of the site, you can simply login to your account to review the sites that were selected. You can go to the ‘Advertiser’ tab and go to “My Favorites”, you can now go to ‘Select Ad’ to proceed with the purchase of the campaign or ‘Delete’ if you don’t like the saved result.

You can marked down your favorites and come back to it later, the favorites will be saved in your account until you either ‘Select Ad’ or ‘Delete’ the ad zone.

Feel free to give us your feedback on ways we can improve your experiences with AdOnion!

After a long and fierce competition of the 2008 Presidential Campaign, the results were finally out last night with Obama winning. The winning of Obama and November 4, 2008 is one of the biggest days marked in history and a day to remembered. The most people voted in the 2008 Presidential Campaign, an unbelievable winning number, a younger man, a black man and strong opponents. After looking at Obama’s campaign, as a marketer we can all take a little something from it. Every marketer’s role is to sell a brand, and what consumers look for in a brand is “new, different and attractive.” (keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide)

Other points that we can all learn from the success of Obama’s campaign are:

• Simplicity – Obama’s campaign was just based on one word “Change”, many of us in the marketing/advertising field is making marketing harder than it sounds. Coming up with great ideas and concept to a marketing campaign to get a buzz, but learning from Obama keeping a simple concept is the key to winning
• Communication/Openness – In today’s world of intelligent consumers and the rich mediums of communication, keeping a good clear channel for communication and letting your consumers feel the openness of your brand is the key.
• Consistency – Throughout the campaign, Obama stick with one image, “Change”, while his competitors jumped from one to one. It is important to stick with one image that you are trying to deliver and make your consumer recognize it. This helps with the positioning of your overall brand in comparison to other ones and this is what builds a strong brand.
• Understanding/Recognition – Being able to understand what your consumers are looking for in a product and implement the desire features will make your product distinguish itself from the crowd.

As you can see with careful planning Obama was the leader in the whole marketing of his campaign and made his opponents to become the follower of his message. He was able to change his opponent’s positioning and image to make them concentrate less on their strengths (experiences) but brought out their limitations in the concept of ‘Change’.

What did you think about the overall 2008 Presidential Campaign? Was the result expected?

As I get questions from publishers on a daily basis asking what type of ads should I placed on my website and which ad format earns more money, we have included stats in our system to inform our publishers about the campaigns our advertisers are setting up. Now you can see the information yourself and judge what kind of ad format you should use for your website.

This information is available when you go to the ‘Create Zone’ page, and the graph is shown on top of the page providing you with the information before you start creating your ad zone. The graph will be able to tell you the percentage of campaigns that make are active and their ad format, and you from the graph you will have an idea of what ad format is needed to help you earn more money for your website.

In addition, if you decide to choose graphical banners we have another graph telling which graphical banner size is in demand.