A recent article posted on Search Engine Land states that click counts have surfaced on Google Adwords ads, displaying the number of clicks for each advertiser under the URLs. According to the article, Google confirmed that the click count is part of a small experiment. Based on the comments circulating online, many people feel this would be an unfair advantage for larger businesses because it might encourage buyers to click on the ads with more clicks. Google often runs multiple experiments at a time, but doesn't typically provide details on them until they are officially rolled out.

Search marketing, which consists of search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search, currently dominates interactive spend out of all interactive mediums, according to a recent Verndale report.  Its popularity has sparked for a number of reasons including the canned, automated metrics that these types of campaigns offer that allow marketers to track the successes and failures of online marketing campaigns. Organizations are investing heavily in this area because of the vast amount of people on the web looking for information. Other leading areas of interactive spend mentioned in the report are social marketing and mobile marketing. Growth expectations in these mediums are expected to rise significantly over the coming years.

Verndale conducted the study to see what tactics organizations were taking to strengthen their marketing capabilities under a fragile economy and stiff budget con­straints. Verndale also looked at what companies were spending on their marketing efforts due to recent marketing trends. Verndale found that:

Verndale also found that:

• Enterprise class firms were spending anywhere from 8% to 14% of sales on sales, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses.
• Midmarket firms, by contrast, were spending anywhere from 26% to 95% on SG&A expenses.
• Combined, firms were spending anywhere from 3% to 70% of their SG&A expenses on marketing alone.

Verndale’s Web Strategy Consultant, Peter Marston, talks a little bit about the study on VerndaleTV (below).

The economic challenges over the past few years have forced marketers to innovate and turn towards interactive marketing versus traditional. Has your company been successful at adopting new interactive marketing tactics? Is it time to adjust your marketing strategy and adopt new interactive marketing techniques?

To find out what you should be spending on digital marketing, download the full report here: Digital Marketing White Paper.