It’s not slowing down, it’s just diversifying
Yahoo’s announcment that it missed its earnings on October 5 caused a few ripples in the industry.
Laura Ramos of Forrester got several media calls asking if she thinks this indicates a larger slow down of Internet marketing spending overall. No way, Jose! she says.
" I think perhaps the biggest realization Yahoo! came to this year is that marketers have many, many alternative places to spend their interactive dollars instead of on banner ads on portal sites. For example, marketers today can build MySpace pages, buy product placements in video games, create RSS feeds, or buy mobile search ads, to drive desired behavior among their target customers."
There are indeed many elements to a successful Internet marketing strategy. Marketers are looking beyond ads on protal sites.
Press releases have become the number one source of knowledge for business buyers, pushing trade pubs into second place.
B2B blogs are on the rise.
RSS feeds on all kinds of content, with or without ads in them, are grabbing marketers attention.
You can make the feed content itself your promotion. Travel and tourism is a perfect fit for this. Marriott’s Caribbean travel feed is a one good example.
There are definitely more ways to skin a cat in internet marketing today. As Ramos says, it’s maturing, not slowing down.
