Do Business Well

WebPromote (www.webpromote.com), founded in 1996, publishes a weekly newsletter packed with useful information on promoting Web sites. It is one of the largest Internet marketing newsletters, with 170,000-plus double-opt-in subscribers. WebPromote provides free information on the latest online promotion and marketing development opportunities. Four years of past issues are available in the archives section.

One example included five predictions for trends in Internet marketing, forecast by marketing consultant Chee Wee:

1 Pay-per-click advertising will increase dramatically

Pay-per-click (PPC) engines like Overture and FindWhat are performing extremely well. Sites displaying Overture’s listings include America Online, Yahoo! Lycos, Hotbot, AltaVista, Netscape, InfoSpace, Dogpile and Excite. Overture’s partnership with Yahoo! ends in June 2002, when Yahoo! is likely to roll out its own PPC system. More search engines are expected to adopt the P PC model or offer co-branded Overture listings. If you are advertising on Overture, expect gradual increases in traffic from most keywords.

2 Ads will grow BIGGER

Yahoo! has begun displaying larger banner ad units that are 720 x 90 pixels in screen size. More sites are expected to follow. The standard 468 x 60 pixel banner size may be replaced with a larger one. Sites that depend largely on advertising for their revenues are likely to roll out more of these large ad units. When Web users become immune to these ads, will content publishers try even larger ads?

3 Rich-media ads will increase in prominence

Ads with animation, sound and interactivity will become more common. Flash ads are already gaining a foothold on the Internet. They work well to capture visitors’ attention. Best of all, they do not need to be large and intrusive — just creative.

4 More email marketing

Permission-based email marketing will increase. The response rates to opt-in email campaigns are significantly higher than for other online ads; the cost per acquisition is lower; turnaround time is faster; and results can be accurately tracked. More companies are expected to move their offline direct mailings online. Unfortunately, spam is likely to increase. More aggressive spam filters will be developed

5 Viral marketing will grow

More companies are forecast to use viral marketing campaigns (introduced in Chapter 5) to promote and brand their products and services. These campaigns are likely to come with more sophisticated tracking of open, click-through and success rates.

The Web Promote site carries many useful tips for promoting Web sites. The comprehensive guide to link popularity is particularly useful.

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