Did your commercial e-mail get blocked?

According to Return Path, the amount of commercial e-mail that gets blocked or filtered, is now about 19.2 percent for the first half of 2006. However, six leading ISPs still blocked more than a third of commercial e-mail for reputable marketers, with Excite blocking more than 50 percent.

There are several things you can do right now to build your e-mail reputation, and give your e-mail the best chance of gaining inbox reach, according to Matt Blumberg, founder, CEO and chairman of Return Path:

Stop focusing on tweaking content for delivery reasons.

Start fixing your list.

Get technical.

Nielsen//NetRatings: Google Captures Half of August Searches

With more than 3 billions U.S. searches last month--a 30 percent increase from August of 2005--Google accounted for 50.2 percent of all searches, according to new data by Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo claimed 24 percent of the market with around 1.43 billion searches--a 24 percent rise from last year. Rounding out the top three was MSN, which accounted for 10 percent of the market with 595 million searches--an increase of 3 percent from last year.

Google expands online news index to include older articles

Google is expanding its online news index to include stories published years ago, continuing the Internet search leader's recent efforts to create new sales channels for long-established media while it strives to make its own Web site even more useful.

The new archives feature will only share excerpts from stories related to users' requests, which are expected to range from seminal moments in history to minutiae about sports and science.

To see the full stories, Google's visitors will be sent to the Web sites that own the content. Those referrals figure to provide media outlets with more opportunities to charge for access to the full stories - a common practice when people want to read historical information.

Google won't collect any commissions for the sales referrals, hoping instead to make money indirectly from increased usage of its own site - the hub of a vast advertising network that accounted for most of the company's $1.3 billion profit during the first half of this year.

The arrangement marks Google's latest attempt to demonstrate the value of its search engine to the traditional media, a segment that has sometimes railed against the Mountain View-based company for profiting from the display of content owned by others.

Online video advertising could increase significantly by 2007

eMarketer projects that online video advertising could increase significantly by 2007. While online video currently accounts for only a sliver of the $16.7 billion that will be spent on online advertising this year, by 2010, online video ad spending is expected to make up 8 percent of the total $29.4 billion that will be spent on advertising online.

The market researcher says the online video sector is growing faster than any other aspect of online marketing, more than 71 percent this year, according to its projections. "As more TV networks make their content available on the Web, deep-pocketed, traditional marketers will better see online video as a necessary piece of their campaigns," says David Hallerman, eMarketer's senior analyst, in a statement.

Spending for Internet video advertising in the U.S. will reach $640 million by 2007, a dramatic jump from last year's $225 million, according to Hallerman's forecast. And by 2010, advertisers will spend over $2.3 billion on video ads online.

Web ads sector lacks experienced staff

The difficulties of hiring people who know how to create, sell and measure internet advertising are limiting the pace at which marketers can shift money from traditional media to hot web properties. According to advertising and media industry executives, one of the biggest obstacles towards even more rapid growth in the online advertising industry – particularly online video advertising – is the lack of experienced staff. “The internet is a less linear space controlled by the consumer, and that makes advertising strategies a lot more complex than those used for television,” said James Kiernan, associate digital director at MediaVest. “There is a dearth of talent on the agency and marketing side and the online publishing side.”

The web is the fastest-growing advertising sector.

In the US, spending is expected to increase by nearly 30 per cent this year to $16bn. In the rest of the world, growth is expected to reach 35 per cent this year, raising spending to $11.6bn, according to Merrill Lynch estimates.

“There is a shortage of talented people out there,” said Robin Kent, the former chief executive of Universal McCann Worldwide.

The whole story can be found on The Financial Times @
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e2a439cc-378b-11db-bc01-0000779e2340.html.

A Bomb Dropped on the Search Marketing Community

This was old news. However, a bomb dropped on the search marketing community on 29/08/2006: After 10 years, Danny Sullivan was leaving Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. More details are on his blog @ http://daggle.com/060829-112950.html.

Electronic Arts To Serve In-Game Ads

Electronic Arts, the world's largest video game publisher, will start serving ads to players while their games are in progress, thanks to new deals with two ad networks, Massive Inc. and IGA Worldwide. Both networks offer technology platforms that allow game publishers and developers to insert dynamic, in-game ads in their titles. The ad placements often take the form of "outdoor" ads such as posters and billboards, served in the game's virtual environment.

Is Google the New Name of Spam?

Faris Yakob, a senior strategist and digital guru at Naked Communications (faris@nakedcomms.com.au) sees Google as the new name of spam. In his article on MediaPost, his definition of "spam," via Google, is "to indiscriminately send unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriate messages, especially commercial advertising in mass quantities".

Purchase of The Wall Street Journal Front Page Ads

When The Wall Street Journal begins running ads on its front page for automakers General Motors and Toyota next week it will mark an industry first. But who handles the media planning and buying? Instead of the well-known North American Publicis' Zenith Media, Toyota turned to Dentsu of America, the fledgling U.S. outpost of Japan's advertising powerhouse. The question is: Can Dentsu do a good job?