Mobile advertising has been the next big thing for a while now. But although text messaging is popular among young adults, the 160-character format has yet to become a mass influencer. Still, consumers who respond to mobile ads are most likely to engage with text messages, according to a survey of mobile users ages 15 and older in the US by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). Seven out of 10 respondents to the DMA’s “Mobile Marketing: Consumer Perspectives” study who had acted on mobile ads said that text messages for a product or service had prompted their actions. That was more than three times as many as responded to a mobile Web offer or coupon.

But even text messaging is not about to replace other marketing mainstays such as e-mail or direct mail. In fact, only 1% of US Internet users surveyed in February 2008 by ExactTarget picked text messaging as their channel of choice for opt-in communications. Instead, the medium is better-suited for targeting specific audiences, and as part of multichannel campaigns.

Text messaging may not dominate mobile advertising as more mobile users with sophisticated phones and data plans come into the fold (think iPhone and its ilk). Yet the simplicity and compatibility of texting is likely to ensure its long-term appeal in the same way text-based e-mail has remained viable.

In the meantime, the bigger issue is when mobile advertising will become a common campaign tactic. For most marketers and advertisers, mobile is still only getting experimental budget at most.

Mobile advertising’s toddler status was reflected in a February 2008 iMedia Connection survey of US online marketers. Although about one-quarter of respondents said they were open-minded enough to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to use mobile ads this year, more than two-thirds said they would do no more than dabble in the channel.

E-commerce in Brazil, like many other Internet activities in that country, is maturing quickly. Between the first half of 2005 and 2008, e-commerce revenues as reported in e-bit’s “Web Shoppers” study nearly quadrupled to reach BRL3.8 billion ($2.2 billion). According to Valor Economico, in 2007 alone the market expanded by 43%. In terms of the number of individuals buying online, the figures are almost as dramatic, with 2.6 million buyers in 2003 rising to 9.5 million in 2007.

More likely than not, adult Internet users in Brazil have purchased something online, according to a December 2007 study by Symantec.

Brazil’s 79% of users who have purchased online is in the upper reaches of worldwide rates, comparable to such advanced Internet players as Japan (82%), the UK (79%) and Germany (78%). In contrast, only 63% of US Internet users have made an online purchase. Simply put, Brazilians who use the Internet tend to use it for everything, including e-commerce.

Online buyers in Brazil are huge media consumers. Books, magazines and newspapers ranked as the top e-commerce categories with a 17% market share in 2007, according to e-bit.

Almost one-half (49.47%) of Brazil’s online buyers use a credit card to make their purchases, versus 39.06% who use a banking ticket to buy online. Other payment methods, including debit or electronic transfer, and payment on delivery, were each favored by less than 10% of respondents to an Ipsos Public Affairs survey.

Females, who make up almost one-half of Internet users in Brazil, are a key factor driving the explosion of e-commerce. A study from e-bit reported in Business News Americas found that online transactions by females increased nearly 10% since 2000.

Advertisers in the UK who sponsor podcasts have a potentially sizable audience, according to Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR) UK’s “Podcasting and Radio Listening via Internet Survey,” conducted in April and May by Ipsos-MORI. More than one-half of responding podcast downloaders said they would be at least somewhat interested in downloading free podcasts that included advertising. Only 31% said they would be interested in paying for ad-free podcasts.

More than four out of 10 UK Internet users ages 16 to 54 have downloaded podcasts at some point, compared with 29.5% of US Internet users, according to Universal McCann’s April 2008 “Power to the People: Social Media Tracker” report.

Regular podcast downloaders are more rare, according to a Wiggin-sponsored study of UK adult Internet users conducted in January by Entertainment Media Research. Only 8% of respondents said they were regular podcast listeners, and only 2% paid to subscribe to podcasts.

Podcast ad skeptics note that not only are regular podcast listeners rare, but podcasting itself is almost by definition a niche medium. Although there are a few podcasts with a mass audience, most reach well under 100,000 listeners.

Boosters of the format say its niche makes for well-targeted audiences, and that podcast advertising networks have the potential to reach across multiple programs with similar listeners

In what is typically a sign of growing broadband usage, the number of dial-up subscribers in Australia showed a notable decline last year, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Meanwhile, the number of high-speed subscribers climbed markedly.

Indeed, broadband penetration in Australia has been rising dramatically over the past several years. A clear majority of households had a broadband connection in 2007, and in 2008 more than 63% of homes, numbering just over 5 million, are expected to be high-speed Internet subscribers. ADSL is by far the most popular broadband technology, projected this year to be installed in almost 4 million households. The use of cable technology for broadband access is a distant second, with 785,000 users projected for 2008.

Across the board, whether via ADSL, cable or other technologies, broadband penetration is expected to continue to climb through 2012, when more than three-quarters of households in Australia are projected to have broadband access of some type. It is safe to say that Australia, despite its small population, is poised to take a top spot among the giants of the industrialized world with regard to broadband penetration.

Although the majority of Internet users in Australia have broadband, their preferred online activities are not bandwidth-intensive, according to Nielsen Online data released in March 2008. Some 98% of those surveyed said they used e-mail while online last year, making it by far the most popular Internet activity in the country. Financial activities were also favorites, including banking (72%) and bill payment (66%).

A minority of respondents said they used the Internet for various e-commerce activities, including purchasing airline tickets (44%), booking hotel and travel arrangements (37%) and auctions (37%). Activities related to research and information are especially popular in Australia, with 62% of respondents reporting they used the Internet for maps and directions and 59% for directories (yellow and white pages).

Source: eMarketer.com

The first rule of online marketing is that the more personal you can make a pitch the better. Turns out the opposite may be true: A recently published study found that the more personalized a message, the less likely a recipient is to respond.

Researchers from the University of Illinois and Northern Illinois University studied the way people responded to emails from a fictional film-review Web site. The volunteers wrote a review for the site and filled out an online profile. Only people who gave the site permission to contact them with future promotions were included in the study.

The researchers found that while some degree of personalization, like addressing someone by name, made people more likely to respond to emails from the site, there’s a fine line between helpful and creepy. A message that addressed someone by name and said “as an action-movie fan, we thought you’d be interested in joining others in San Francisco” was the email equivalent of a pushy sales person, Debra Zahay, one of the study’s authors, tells the Business Technology Blog.

The study found that over time a business could start to personalize emails, but not until it had a longstanding relationship with a customer. Otherwise it’s like talking about marriage on the first date – while it shows you’re serious, it’s also a little freaky.

And that is really the bottom line, Tiffany Barnett White, another of the authors, tells the Business Technology Blog. “As academics we like to have really technical terms,” she says. “But really it’s just the creep-out factor.”

Most smaller businesses know by now that search engine optimization is an effective way to get their sites noticed by the almighty search engines. But a recent survey indicates that SEO is the best way to generate online leads. Is your site optimized for search? Paul Bruemmer writes on SearchEngineLand about a recent study done in the UK by eConsultancy on online marketing.

The study demonstrates that “natural search is the best tactic for generating online leads, concluding it is greatly underused despite the fact that it outperforms nearly all other types of online marketing.”

The stats:

Natural search (79%) is the most frequently used online marketing tactic for lead generation, followed by email marketing in-house lists (75%) and paid search (71%). Over half (52%) of company respondents said natural search was “very effective.” Just under half (48%) said paid search was very effective.

Bruemmer writes: ” While online lead generation is becoming more important for many businesses, only a little over half of the company respondents in this survey felt their company wasn’t exploiting this type of marketing as effectively as it could be, illustrating that online lead generation delivers results but could be utilized better.”

Bruemmer notes that according to the report, a larger proportion of online lead generation budgets go to paid search advertising even though “natural search is perceived as providing the best value for the money. Companies haven’t invested in natural search over and above other internet marketing tactics because it requires more effort, but don’t make that mistake in your search marketing efforts.”

Bruemmer addresses in-house search marketing managers in his emphasis on “taking advantage of all search marketing tactics,” but for many smaller businesses, their marketing managers are wearing many hats or in some cases don’t exist. SEO is crucial to a Web site’s success and eConsultancy’s survey validates the point but is it worth hiring an SEO consultant for?

In the course of profiling many small and mid size businesses, it is clear that SEO is becoming increasingly recognized as a necessary part of an online strategy. But it seems that there is no universal approach to how to implement an effective SEO strategy: Some smaller businesses are outsourcing to their Web site developers, some to SEO consultants, and some are trying to learn the art of SEO on their own. Which practice is best of course depends upon the nature of the business, it’s size, and the ability of those involved to implement effective SEO strategies.

Nearly six out of 10 US teens surveyed have made a purchase online, according to a June 2008 study conducted by OTX and The Intelligence Group. Responding online buying teens said they spent an average of $46 every month, and more than one-quarter spent $50 or more. Clothes and music were the two most popular online purchases, followed by books, electronics and DVDs.

OTX noted that the Internet is only one of several media types that teens use and that they do not want to do everything online. For example, 82% of teens said they preferred shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, while only 18% said they liked shopping online better.

Mandy Putnam, vice president at TNS Retail Forward said in a June 2008 STORES article that while young people prefer the “sensory stimulation that accompanies shopping with friends at stores,” preshopping online is training teens to be smart shoppers and to stretch their dollars.

“Teens are proving to be very savvy online shoppers who compare and contrast and click endlessly in search of the item they want at a price they’re willing to pay—or that they think mom will go along with,” Ms. Putnam said.

Although teens are actively buying online, the amount they spend may be taking a hit from the economic slowdown, according to Piper Jaffray’s most recent “Teen Spending Survey,” released in April 2008. Piper and its research partner, student marketing association DECA, found that total year-over-year spending was down 15% among young men and 11% for young women.

Spending among 13 to 21 year-olds reached $120 billion in 2007, according to The Harris Poll.

Primetime and scheduled TV are losing their impact as consumers create their own entertainment lineups. Digital video recorders (DVRs) and video-on-demand (VOD) allow viewers to watch content on their own schedule and avoid traditional TV advertising.

At the same time, the slowing economy drives advertisers to demand the greatest return on their advertising investments. With interactive digital platforms allowing more measurability, the business case for traditional TV advertising is becoming increasingly weak.

VOD would seem well-positioned to capture a rising share of ad spending, but the way consumers use it may limit its potential as an ad medium.

Most cable TV operators offer free VOD content in combination with pay-per-view options, but time-shifting with DVRs is proving more popular.

According to Comcast—the leading cable operator in the US with 14.7 million subscribers—the most popular free VOD content is karaoke, music videos and programs for children.

VOD’s ad potential is somewhat limited by use. An August 2007 study by IBM indicated that only 48% of US adult Internet users had used VOD.

eMarketer estimates that VOD is available in one-third of TV households today, and will reach over 60% of households by 2012.

Content is the big driver of VOD usage. ChoiceStream data from December 2007 shows there would be greater viewership of VOD if there were “more content of interest.” Notably, however, 57% of respondents said they would not watch more VOD even if the content were better. Clearly price, awareness and usability are also factors in VOD usage.

Increasing the VOD audience (and ad revenue potential) may depend in part on advertisers and marketers: Better content, supported by ads, combined with VOD awareness and education campaigns, could be part of the solution.

How you create a blog on Posterous (www.posterous.com) ? Is it difficult? Where is the innovation? - To see it for yourself just email something to post@posterous.com. The subject line of the email is the post title, the text area is the content. You can also email photos, videos and sounds files, which will be displayed in a custom Flash player on the site. You can choose to have comments emailed to you, and you can reply to the comment by simply responding back to the email (I wish Wordpress had that feature). Posterous is the new ideal mobile blogging platform. New features will be launched over the summer, says co-founder including customized CSS and the ability to cross post to other blogging platforms.

Roughly 11 million UK Internet users visited online social network sites regularly in 2007. And the market is booming—60% of respondents to an early-2008 survey said they had created a social network profile, up from 27% in 2007. The UK Social Network Marketing report analyzes the burgeoning growth of this channel, both online and on mobile phones. Online social network ad spending has moved at a slower pace than consumer adoption, but things are picking up. This year spending is expected to rise 77% to £115 million ($225 million). In 2012, marketers are projected to spend £285 million ($533 million), a 148% increase over 2008. The UK currently dominates social network spending in Western Europe, with 68% of the market.