Check out our recent marketing research findings (done in conjunction with the CMO Council) that point to the increasing popularity of software downloads among technology professionals. In a marketing survey of 750 IT professionals, software downloads were noted as being the “most effective” media type for shopping a vendor’s solution online. Also found in this marketing research is that podcasts usage is climbing and responses indicate that they are viewed as providing early stage buyer/research information to IT pros.
Any comments on either media type would be appreciated.

According to the MediaPost article by Tobi Elkin, Jefferies: Online Ad Spending could exceed $60B by 2010,  Investment bank Jefferies & Co. raised its estimated for the worldwide online advertising industry  to more than $60B by 2010 – up from the $54B it projected in 2006.   With this increase in online advertising budget - how will marketers spend this increase in advertising dollars?   One option:  Contextual advertising.  Contextual advertising has been one of the latest advantages for online advertising.

It allows a company to meet the right audience at the right time.  Many websites have started to offer targeted text ads. These ads display in relevance to the content on the website that they appear.

At TechTarget, we have proven that aligning ads to the most relevant editorial content doubles or triples response rates.   What has your experience been with contextual marketing?

A couple weeks ago, I attended the Online Marketing Summit hosted by BusinessOnLine down in San Diego. One of the major themes of the event was how to measure website performance and ROI. The event featured a keynote from web analytics guru, Jim Sterne and a session from the ever entertaining Eric Peterson of WebSideStory. Both sessions helped me understand not only the power of website metrics, but validated that not everyone is doing it and/or doing it perfectly.

Being on the publisher side, I am highly intrigued with how all this data provided through website analytics can be used to determine the engagement level of our users. Discussions on Peterson’s blogs showcase engagement level as a customized, unique metric that is determined by the reviewing the goals of the website. As an example, if part of your marketing strategy includes a blog, what would you determine the level of engagement? When the user visits, responds to the blog, or reaches some frequency of response? It’s obvious that having the data is one thing, but using the data to define and reach goals is a hole other challenge.

What is your company’s strategy for website analytics and if you have a strategy, how do you use website analytics to determine and define engagement?

We spend all of our time in this blog trying to give IT marketers the right information, answers, and advice on a wide array of both straightforward and complex subjects in order to help them achieve more success in their marketing efforts. However, the best piece of marketing advice I can pass along to this audience is really very simple: Be Interesting. Earth-shattering? No. To find out why this is more compelling than you think, especially in the age of Web 2.0, read this great post from The Innovative Marketer.

Podcast usage grew tenfold in 2006, according to the latest report released by Forrester. Forrester analyst Brian Haven, the author of the report, reported in a recent interview with Beet.TV that 10% of North American individuals online download at least one podcast a month – up from the 1% Forrester reported based on the same survey data for 2005. Advertising revenue is following suit as well with podcasts foretasted to generate $400 million in advertising revenue by 2011, a fivefold increase over 2006.

I commented on the original report in this blog back in April. At that time, while there was much skepticism on the adoption of podcasts in the mainstream market, we did not share the same outlook for the IT market where we have seen healthy adoption rates. Now that this skepticism seems to have eroded in the mainstream market, this medium is really poised to take off. And the key driver? According to Mr. Haven, content availability - the more the content becomes available, the more it will be consumed. I agree with this point, especially considering that at this time, podcasts can be produced very affordably with few technological barriers to download.

What are your strategies regarding podcasts in 2007?