According to research conducted by William Blair and AdGooroo, the growth in total number of search engine marketers exceeds the growth of industry sales. In fact, the total number of advertisers has increased an estimated twenty percent between February and July 2007.

Blair partnered with AdGooroo to examine the search engine marketer trends that drive this twenty billion dollar market.

“We culled data from AdGooroo’s database of keyword advertising to glean insight into industry composition, industry growth, market share, seasonality and company-specific trends,” the report says. “In total, we believe the global marketplace comprises more than five-hundred thousand advertisers and that about ninety percent advertise with Google.”

Additionally, the study found that Project Panama, which serves fewer, more relevant ads with each search, is affecting Yahoo’s advertiser base. The system is helping Yahoo to attract a surge of new advertisers after the launch. However, the study found thatYahoo faced fallout due to the relevancy-based ranking, which hurt some advertisers and its efforts to clean up the advertiser base.

You’ve heard it here a million times: while Google may be the most popular and well-known search engine in the U.S., it doesn’t necessarily make it the best engine for finding relevant information.

Often times Google turns up very irrelevant results in its SERPS as its spiders must crawl the entire vast and ever-expanding world wide web. That’s why many businesses have shifted their SEM dollars opting to advertise on more niche-specific search engines, vertical search engines. As Laura Tiffany states in a recent article on Entrepeneur.com, if you’re a B2B company and “you’re looking for highly targeted business purchasers, it may be wise to go vertical.” You can get the full scoop by visiting http://www.entrepreneur.com/technology/article183770.html.

Hachette Filipacchi Media’s Elle magazine has partnered with Yahoo! to create a mobile site devoted to Fashion Week.

The site will be accessible through Yahoo! oneSearch, Elle Mobile and text starting with New York Fashion Week September 5th. The service will continue through Fashion Weeks in Milan and Paris.

“It’s a very simple proposition, really,” Olivier Griot, managing director of mobile at Hachette Filipacchi, said of the new site. “We have built mobile Internet sites — Elle Mobile is one of these sites — and our goal is to aggregate an audience on Elle Mobile to generate page views and bring unique users to these destinations. And in the same way as we do on the regular Internet, we want to be able to sell this audience to advertisers.”

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Any international retailer can tell you that it’s damn near impossible for them to open up their own stores in China. The differences in our cultural traditions and economic practices are so dissimilar from Chinese tradition and economy that retailers are presented with many insuperable challenges. Without the right partner or knowledge, international retailers risk diluting their brand equity, especially when they don’t effectively adapt their business models to the local customs of conducting retail.

Because of the difficulty involved in forging business relationships in China, there are very few brands there at this time. It seems only world famous brands have a presence there, brands like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, DKNY, and Polo. But the Chinese consumer is dying to have new brands from international retailers who can show various products for modern lifestyles. There currently exists a vacuum for up-and-coming brands from the U.S., Canada and Europe, and this presents exciting new opportunities for the international retailers of these countries.

ASAP Show is pleased to announce the 9th edition of the ASAP Buying Trip to China and the 3rd Edition of Fashion International Trade Show (FITS). The eleven-day trip will take place Friday October 19th through Monday October 29th. Participants are advised to depart from the U.S.A. or E.U. to arrive at Pudong Airport in Shanghai where they can check in to their hotel.

The buying trip will include visits to Hangzhou and Ningbo. Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, is Zhejiang’s political, cultural and economic center. It is an important city of economy on the south wing of Yangzte Delta, and since the adoption of the reform and opening-up policy the GDP of Hangzhou has increased at an average rate of 22.3% annually. The main industries of this region include the business of textile, silk, machinery, electronics, chemicals, light industry, and food processing.

For over a decade the Internet has been changing the way we do business, but most critics underestimated how much it was really changing consumers. A stronger, savvier consumer has emerged. This consumer has ever-rising expectations and increasing demands, both online and off. We’re in a tidal wave of change as it relates to marketing and branding. Traditional businesses and brands can no longer say, “That’s a Web thing.” We are approaching a brand new era. Some like to call it Web 2.0. But whatever you call it, it’s a relatively new phenomenon for brands that don’t consider their home base to be on the Web.

Internet behemoth Google Inc. is being sued by American Airlines for the unauthorized use of trademarks and services identifying the airline to Internet users, according to a complaint filed on August 16.

Google’s search engine is allegedly helping third parties to mislead consumers and misappropriate the American Airlines marks by using them as keyword triggers for paid advertisements.

“In working through this business dispute, American is hopeful that it will continue professional, friendly and fruitful relationships with Google, while finding an appropriate resolution to the trademark issues,” said an American Airlines representative in a prepared statement. Google did not return their calls. Google’s trademark policy states, “Google will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint.”

Lead counsel for this lawsuit, Terence P. Ross, is no stranger to keyword lawsuits. He worked on similar suits for clients including Wells Fargo and 1-800 Contacts. Ross was not available for comment.

U.S. flag sales are apparently on the rebound according to many retailers. Flag sales hit record levels after the September 11th terrorist attacks of 2001 and again shortly after the Iraq war began in 2003, but sales already started to slump by 2004. Now it seems flag sales are picking up again. Many believe that this year’s steady sales are fueled by regular Memorial Day and Independence Day purchases plus the replacement of worn flags from those peak sale times. Others see sales as a direct result of increased support for U.S. troops. Whatever the reason behind it is, more Americans are buying flags these days.

By Crystal Silvas

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